Some in Arab world suspicious of Clinton

Washington: There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Senator Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Clinton said the US could "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. She said the United States should not negotiate with Hamas, the fighter group that controls Gaza, unless it renounced terrorism.

"The United States stands with Israel, now and forever," Clinton told AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, at its conference in June.

Yet Clinton is also the former first lady who famously broke with her husband's administration in 1998 and said Palestinians should have a state of their own. Arabs and particularly Palestinians are nervous that Obama seems prepared to give the job to a senator from New York who has spent the past eight years cultivating her pro-Israel constituency.

Other diplomats and foreign policy experts predict Clinton would push hard for a Middle East peace deal, in keeping with the activist approach taken by President Bill Clinton in the final years of his administration.

Practical solutions

Some who have worked closely with Hillary Clinton during her years as first lady and as a senator say that these predictions miss the point that she would be looking to fashion practical solutions to the issues of Middle East peace, Iran's nuclear programme, Iraq's political future and other problems that would confront her and Obama next year.

"The first thing you need to know about Hillary Clinton is she is a pragmatist - she wants to know what works," said Sen Evan Bayh, D-Ind, who has travelled with Clinton on fact-finding trips for the Armed Services Committee.

"She believes in diplomacy and multilateral solutions but is not averse to using force when that is the only opportunity to protect our national security interests."

What Clinton believes will be somewhat beside the point come January 20: In her new post, she will be vying with other powerful figures - including Vice-President Joe Biden - for the president's ear, and she will be responsible for implementing a foreign policy established in the end by Obama.

The biggest determinant for Clinton's success, according to former State Department officials, is the kind of working arrangement she is able to establish with Obama, with whom she had a testy relationship during the primaries that seemed to warm up during the general-election campaign.

She said the United States should not negotiate with Hamas, the fighter group that controls Gaza, unless it renounced terrorism.