(MENAFN – Qatar News Agency) US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will Thursday launch four new Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) initiatives valued at up to 86.5 Million, at the US Department of State.
These new initiatives include: efforts to advance women’s clean energy entrepreneurship; a global partnership to promote affordable Internet access in poor communities; a new commitment to the Global Equality Fund which aims to protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons worldwide; and new investments in the clean cookstoves sector, the State Department said.
Secretary Clinton will be joined by Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and the Special Representative for Global Partnerships Kris Balderston.
Wanjira Mathai, daughter of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai and board member of the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies, will deliver remarks.
The State Department has, to date, worked with over 1,100 partners and mobilized more than 650 million in public and private resources to support key foreign policy objectives including climate change mitigation, women’s empowerment, economic growth, and human rights.
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Hillary Unleashed 
Clinton raps Benghazi critics
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Feb 1, 7:22 AM (ET)
By MATTHEW LEE
(AP) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks on American leadership at the Council on Foreign…
WASHINGTON (AP) – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is leaving office with a slap at critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. She told The Associated Press that critics of the administration’s handling of the attack don’t live in an “evidence-based world” and their refusal to “accept the facts” is unfortunate and regrettable for the political system.
In her last one-on-one interview before she steps down on Friday, Clinton told the AP that the attack in Benghazi was the low point of her time as America’s top diplomat. But she suggested that the furor over the assault would not affect whether she runs for president in 2016.
Although she insisted that she has not decided what her future holds, she said she “absolutely” still plans to make a difference on issues she cares about in speeches and in a sequel to her 2003 memoir, “Living History,” that will focus largely on her years as secretary of state.
Clinton spoke to the AP Thursday in her outer office on the seventh floor of the State Department less than 24 hours before she walks out for a final time as boss. She was relaxed but clearly perturbed by allegations from Republican lawmakers and commentators that the administration had intentionally misled the public about whether the attack was a protest gone awry or a terrorist attack, or intentionally withheld additional security for diplomatic personnel in Libya knowing that an attack could happen.
(AP) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton smiles before speaking on American leadership at the…
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An independent panel she convened to look into the incident was scathing in its criticism of the State Department and singled out four officials for serious management and leadership failures. But it also determined that there was no guarantee that extra personnel could have prevented the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans. Clinton herself was not blamed, although she has said she accepted responsibility for the situation.
“I was so unhappy with the way that some people refused to accept the facts, refused to accept the findings of an independent Accountability Review Board, politicized everything about this terrible attack,” she said. “My job is to admit that we have to make improvements and we’re going to.”
Clinton faced a barrage of hostile questions about Benghazi from Republican lawmakers when she testified before Congress recently in appearances that were delayed from December because of illness. Afterward, some lawmakers continued to accuse her and the administration of withholding evidence. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., told a television interviewer that he thought Clinton was getting “away with murder.”
In the interview, Clinton had little patience for such allegations.
“There are some people in politics and in the press who can’t be confused by the facts,” she said. “They just will not live in an evidence-based world. And that’s regrettable. It’s regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances.”
(AP) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks on American leadership at the Council on Foreign…
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At the same time, Clinton said she refused to be “discouraged by the fact that they are never going to accept the facts and the limitations of the facts.” She added that “you have to get up every day and work to do best you can and communicate that to the vast majority of fair-minded Americans whether they’re in Congress, in the press or in the public.”
Because of that, she said, the partisan divide should not dissuade anyone with a cause from getting involved in politics and she hinted strongly that a divisive atmosphere would not stop her in any future endeavor. “You have to have a thick skin because (politics) is just going to be a contact sport as far as we can look into the future.”
Clinton is no stranger to partisan politics. As first lady, she railed in 1998 against a “vast right-wing conspiracy” that she asserted had been attacking her husband, Bill Clinton, ever since he had become president.
But the woman who was once considered a divisive figure in American politics, yet leaves office as one of its most popular, remained coy about whether she would run for president in 2016.
“I am making no decisions, but I would never give that advice to someone that I wouldn’t take myself,” she said. “If you believe you can make a difference, not just in politics, in public service, in advocacy around all these important issues, then you have to be prepared to accept that you are not going to get 100 percent approval.”
Asked if she still thought she could make a difference, Clinton replied, “Absolutely,” but added quickly that she hadn’t yet decided how.
“I have deliberately cabined it off,” she said. “I am going to be secretary of state until the very last minute when I walk out the door. And then I am going to take the weekend off and then I may start thinking about all the various offers and requests and ideas that have come my way.
“I have made no decisions and I just can’t until I have time to think it through and see how I am going to put it all together. I will certainly write something. I will certainly speak. Those are givens, but the rest of it I don’t have in mind. And I hope through my writing and speaking to continue making a difference as well.”
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130201/DA45R6S01.html
As she leaves, Clinton sounds warning over Syria
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a parting warning Thursday about Syria’s civil war, accusing Iran of playing an increasingly prominent role in directing the violence, which she said heightened the danger of a larger regional conflict that draws in Israel or other neighbors.
“I’ve done what was possible to do,” Clinton told reporters on the eve of her last day as secretary of state.
But she painted a harrowing picture of a war that could still get worse.
“The worst kind of predictions about what could happen internally and spilling over the borders of Syria are certainly within the realm of the possible now,” she said.
The conflict “is distressing on all fronts,” Clinton told a roundtable of journalists Thursday, a day before John Kerry is sworn in as her successor. She pointed the finger primarily at Iran, accusing it of dispatching more personnel and better military materiel to President Bashar Assad’s regime to help him defeat rebel forces. Its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, is also playing a bigger role in the conflict.
“The Iranians are all in for Assad, and there is very little room for any kind of dialogue with them,” Clinton said.
She spoke after Syria threatened Thursday to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike, and its ally Iran warned ominously that the Jewish state would regret the attack.
In a letter to the U.N. secretary-general, Assad’s regime stressed its “right to defend itself, its territory and sovereignty” and holding Israel and its supporters accountable. And Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, Assad’s ambassador in Lebanon, said his government maintained “the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation.”
Clinton declined to talk specifically about Israel’s strike, which U.S. officials described as targeting trucks containing sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. The trucks were next to a military research facility, and the strike hit both the trucks and the facility, U.S. officials said.
If the SA-17s were to have reached Hezbollah, they would have greatly inhibited the Israeli air force’s ability to operate in Lebanon, where Israel has flown frequent sorties in recent years. The attack has inflamed regional tensions already running high over Syria’s 22-month-old civil war, and which has already led to deaths in neighboring Turkey and Lebanon.
In her strikingly candid assessment, Clinton spread the criticism to Russia, which has stymied U.S.-led efforts to set global sanctions against the Syrian regime at the U.N. Security Council. Washington and Moscow have remained in a three-way dialogue with the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, since late last year, but Clinton said the Russians were simultaneously providing financial assistance and military equipment to Assad.
“The Russians are not passive bystanders in their support for Assad. They have been much more active,” she told reporters. “But maybe they will change. And maybe they will be more open to an international solution because they can’t look at what’s happening and not believe it could be incredibly dangerous to everyone’s interests, including theirs.”
Despite the dismal outlook of the war, Clinton stressed she in no way has softened her opposition to the United States providing weapons to Syrian rebels or intervening militarily to halt the conflict. Asked about America’s Gulf allies who have sent arms to the Syrian opposition, Clinton said the Obama administration continues to urge caution on the types of materiel being supplied and vetting recipients.
The U.S. fears that if extremist groups get dangerous weapons, they could then use them against American interests or Israel.
“Sitting here today, I can’t tell you that we’ve been entirely successful in that,” Clinton said. “There are those who are supplying weapons and money for weapons, who really don’t care who gets it as long as they are against Assad – and who have the view that once Assad is gone, then we’ll deal with the consequences of these other groups who are now armed and funded. That’s not our view.”
She stressed that a political solution was necessary, and defended Syria’s top opposition leader for suggesting earlier this week that he’d be willing to negotiate with members of Assad’s regime. The call provoked an outcry from rebels who insist that Assad must step down first.
And she urged Kerry to press on with efforts at the United Nations and elsewhere to “create more credibility for the opposition” and create the possibility for more forceful international action to end the war.
“I think I’ve done what was possible to do over the last two years in trying to create or help stand up an opposition that was credible and could be an interlocutor in any kind of political negotiation,” Clinton said. “We’ve engaged in a steady drumbeat of activities and trying to put together a coalition and trying to find a way to get something through the Security Council that would serve as the international legal basis for further action to be taken by many countries.”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CLINTON_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-31-18-35-42