chitika

Friday, 29 June 2012

Pune cops asks 15-year-old to get back with her husband

Pune cops asks 15-year-old to get back with her husband
Social workers Nasima Maniyar and Anis Shaikh, who produced the 15-year-old girl before Child Welfare Committee after officials of the Dehu Road police station refused to lodge a complaint
Pune: Officials of the Dehu Road police station have come under heavy criticism for allegedly turning down a 15-year-old's plea to register a complaint of domestic violence against her husband and in-laws. In addition, they allegedly asked the girl to go back to her husband's home, and gave her Rs. 20 for medical treatment.

Local Child Rights Activists have now demanded action against the officials. According to the complainant, unable to bear the physical torture she was being subjected to on a regular basis, the girl ran away from her in-laws residence at Kalekhadak in Wakad on June 26. She first went to Dehu Road Railway Station where she accidentally met social worker Nasima Maniyar. The victim had approached Maniyar asking her for a job. On close observation Maniyar realised that the victim, who was crying bitterly, had been beaten mercilessly.

Nasima, who was with her relative Anis Khan, consoled the victim and coaxed her to tell her story. Based on the victim's narration, Mainyar asked her to lodge a police complaint at Dehu Road police station. The girl was accompanied to the police station by a couple of Maniyar's colleagues. However, the trio was in for a rude shock when the Dehu Road police officials, instead of registering a complaint against the victim's husband and in-laws, asked her to get back to her in-laws home. In addition, one of the constables even gave the victim Rs. 20, alleged Maniyar.

To confirm that the victim was badly beaten, Maniyar then took her to Dr Yamini Adbe, a medical professional and a Human Rights activist, for a check up on June 26. "There were several marks on her body, including her private parts, which clearly indicated that she was being brutalised frequently," Dr Adbe said.

Dr Adbe then approached Child Rights Activist Anuradha Sahasrabudhhe of Childline, who suggested her to present the minor before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Maniyar, along with a colleague, presented the victim before the CWC yesterday. After hearing the girl's case, CWC member Anita Vipat ordered that the girl to undergo medical examination at Sassoon Hospital following which she would be sent to the observation home.

"Stringent action should be taken against the policemen who advised the girl to go back to her husband and in-laws home while ignoring her pleas for help and protection from them," Anuradha Sahasrabudhhe said. Advocate Supriya Kothari of Bhagini helpline, an NGO that provides legal help to women facing harassment from in-laws or others, seconded Sahasrabudhhe's opinion.

"Police should have sent her for medical test. If the tests proved that she was underage, then the cops should have had immediately booked her husband, in-laws and her parents, under relevant sections of the Child Marriage Act. In addition, under Section 12 of the Domestic Violence Act 2005, if the victim is unable to narrate the trauma, then anyone on its behalf can apply for protection of the aggrieved person, either to the First Class Magistrate, or at the police station," Kothari said.

The other side
Senior Police Inspector Ram Jadhav of Dehu Road police station said officials may have given money for her medical treatment. When questioned about why the officials asked her to go home instead of registering a complaint, he said, "Just because the girl is saying that she's a minor, it cannot be accepted, we need proof." When informed that some social workers had witnessed the incident, he demanded that they be sent to the police station, as he would like to hear the exact details of the June 26 incident from them.
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Sensex soars 450 points amid global rally, rupee below 56


The 30-share BSE Sensex soared to the highest point of the day as buying picked up in the last hour of trade. Positive global cues and a turnaround in domestic sentiments drove the Sensex 450 points higher. The Sensex and Nifty traded with over 2.5% gains, and were the top gainers among Asian markets.

European stocks maintained morning gains on the back of the agreement to use the continent's permanent bailout fund to recapitalize struggling banks. EU leaders also agreed to the idea of a tighter union in the long term.

Spain's IBEX index traded off the day's high, rising 2.4% while the CAC 40 benchmark in France extended gains, rising 2.4% higher. Earlier, Asian stocks closed near the day's high. The benchmark in Hong Kong jumped 2.2%, while Japan's Nikkei index ended 1.5% higher.

Domestic sentiments were boosted by the new draft guidelines on the general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR) announced late night yesterday. According to the guidelines, the tax evasion rule will be invoked only in those cases where foreign investors have opted to take the benefit of tax avoidance treaties. The rules would not apply retrospectively and will be triggered only above a certain income threshold.



Markets are likely to give thumbs up to these measures, analysts say.

'There is some cause for hope. Over the last two days, there have been new people at the finance ministry... Last night, the draft guidelines for GAAR have been out and they seem logical... Markets have been hearing about gloom and doom so far, so given the amount of bad news over the last 30 days, this gives some hopes," Shanti Ekambaram of Kotak Bank told NDTV Profit.

At 2.10 p.m., the Sensex traded 446 points higher at 17,436, while the Nifty index advanced 131 points higher at 5,280. The rupee surged over 1.6% and traded at 55.90 to the dollar.

All groups of stocks traded with large gains. ICICI Bank, ITC, Reliance Industries, L&T, and HDFC Bank were the top Sensex movers, adding over 200 index points to the BSE benchmark.

Oil and gas major Cairn India (-6%) and oil refiner BPCL (-0.85%) were the only stocks trading lower on the Nifty index. Cairn India shares fell after its erstwhile promoter Cairn Energy sold shares in the open market.

The market breadth was strong with over 87% stocks rising on the broader BSE 500 index.


With inputs from Associated Press

Thursday, 28 June 2012

Britain's queen shakes hands with former IRA chief

Britain's queen shakes hands with former IRA chief
Belfast: Britain's Queen Elizabeth shook the hand of former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander Martin McGuinness for the first time on Wednesday, drawing a line under a conflict that cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians, including that of her cousin.

The meeting with Mr McGuinness, who is now the deputy first minister of British-controlled Northern Ireland, comes 14 years after the IRA ended its war against Britain's claim to the province, and is one of the last big milestones in a peace process whose success has been studied around the world.

The queen met Mr McGuinness behind closed doors in a theatre in a leafy middle-class suburb of Belfast, which hundreds of police cordoned off ahead of the event.

There has been scattered opposition to the gesture of reconciliation from dissident Irish militants and from some of the IRA's victims. But the vast majority of the province's politicians back the meeting, the first between the queen and a top member of the IRA or its former political wing, Sinn Fein.

"Today is a huge event and it is, in a sense, the ultimate handshake," John Reid, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2001 to 2002, told the BBC.

"On all sorts of levels this is a hugely significant step but it is only one more step in a long process. This may take generations - to get back to absolute reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland."

Mr McGuinness has long been reconciled with the fiery anti-Catholic Unionist leader Ian Paisley, who sat with him in a power-sharing provincial government.

The queen regularly meets senior Unionist politicians, Protestants who want Northern Ireland to stay inside the United Kingdom, but not Sinn Fein, the largest party representing Catholic nationalists who want a united Ireland.

HERO AND HATE-FIGURE

Mr McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government, is a hero to Republican hardliners, but has long been a hate figure to Unionists, many of whom harbour deep suspicions about his past.

He admits he was on the front line in the war with British forces, including on Bloody Sunday in 1972, when troops shot dead 13 unarmed protesters, but says he never killed anyone.

A British report said that Mr McGuinness probably was armed with a submachine gun on Bloody Sunday, but did nothing to provoke the massacre. He has said he left the IRA in 1974, but most historians believe he was active for most of its campaign.

For the queen, the Northern Ireland conflict has long had a personal edge. Her cousin Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA in 1979 with three others, including his 14-year-old grandson, when his boat was blown up while he was on holiday in Ireland.

More than 1,000 members of the British security forces were among 3,600 people killed during the 30 years of the "Troubles".

"I represent people that have been terribly hurt by British state violence over the course of many years," Mr McGuinness said in a video interview that Irish journalist Eamonn Mallie posted on his website on Tuesday.

"But I am also big enough to understand that Queen Elizabeth has also lost a loved one, and of course there are families in Britain. Mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, children of people who were sent here as British soldiers who lost their lives also."

Sinn Fein, which has become increasingly popular south of the Irish border as the main party opposing an EU/IMF bailout, is keen to bolster its image as a mainstream party and distance itself from a violent past that alienates many southern voters.

REFERENDUM?

Sinn Fein still wants a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of Britain, where its members still refuse to take their parliamentary seats, but in the short term its aim is to be in government north and south simultaneously.

Just last year Sinn Fein rejected invitations to attend events during the queen's landmark visit to the Irish capital Dublin, the first by a British monarch since the republic won independence from Britain in 1921.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams acknowledged last week that Wednesday's meeting would cause difficulties among party supporters. Some branded Mr McGuinness a traitor for meeting a queen who is also commander-in-chief of Britain's armed forces.

"People are not unhappy that someone is shaking her hand, just not him. He's a hypocrite," said Martin, a 42-year-old unemployed man who said he and his friends had got criminal records defending their neighbourhood in working-class Belfast.

"He sent people out to fight. To die. And now he's putting on a suit and shaking her hand? I don't want war (but) this shouldn't have happened till the next generation."

However, the very fact that a visit by the queen was announced in advance, for the first time since the conflict began, shows the vast progress the province has made.

When the queen last visited for a jubilee celebration in 1977, she was forced to stay overnight on a ship at sea before flying to Belfast, parts of which were effectively controlled by the IRA.

With small splinter groups continuing to attack British targets, security forces say the risk of an attack is at its highest level since the Good Friday peace agreement was signed in 1998.

Nine police officers suffered minor injuries on Tuesday night when they were pelted with petrol bombs and other missiles.

Former Pak minister detained at US airport

Former Pak minister detained at US airport
Houston: Former Pakistani minister Shaikh Rashid, known for his pro-LeT leanings, was detained at Houston airport on arrival for his possible links with the terror group's founder Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks.

61-year-old Rashid, leader of the Awami Muslim League of Pakistan, was detained soon after he arrived by an Emirates flight on Wednesday evening and was freed after five hours of interrogation.

Sources said Rashid was detained for his possible links with Saeed.

It is understood that he was scheduled to attend a fundraiser and meetings with his supporters in the US.

The US Department of Homeland Security was not immediately available for any comments.

According to Pakistan's Geo News channel, the former minister was released after Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Sherry Rehman, asked the Pakistani consulate here to help him out.

Following her directives, Pakistan's Consul General in Houston, Aqil Nadeem, reached the airport to talk to the immigration authorities following which the former minister was allowed to leave the airport after five hours of interrogation, it said.

Rashid had in recent past actively attended the rallies and meetings organised by Defa-e Pakistan Council, an alliance of extremist and hardline groups formed by JuD chief Saeed.

He had accompanied Saeed to the rallies and press conferences where they both made statements against India and the US.

Rashid had served as the federal Minister for Railways in Pakistan from 2006 to 2008.

Maruti's Diwali gift: a new 800cc car

Article
A Maruti Suzuki plant in Gurgaon. Photo: Reuters

Maruti Suzuki India is gearing up to introduce by the end of this year a new 800cc car that is likely to be more fuel efficient, but also more expensive, than its existing best-selling model Alto.

According to sources close to the development, the company will start commercial production of the car at its Gurgaon facility from July or August and will launch it by Diwali.

"Although this will be an 800cc car, technologically it will be more advanced than the existing two 800cc models. It'll be more fuel efficient, and hence will also be more expensive than M800 and Alto," a source said.

It is understood that MSI has upgraded the existing engine and platform of the Alto instead of a complete overhaul in order to reduce development costs.

As per the company's official website, the prices of M800 varies between Rs 2.05 lakh and Rs 2.30 lakh, while that of Alto stands at Rs 2.40-3.43 lakh. A 1,000cc variant of the Alto is priced at Rs 3.14-3.31 lakh. All the prices are for ex-showroom, Delhi.

When contacted, a Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) spokesperson declined to comment "on any future model development".

Sources said the company has already done the test productions at various stages of development and is now gearing up to roll out the vehicle commercially.

"The commercial production of the car will start from July or August and it will be launched by Diwali. This will be produced at the Gurgaon facility," a source said.

The company has stopped selling M800 in specific cities where Bharat Stage IV emission norms are applicable as the car does not meet the stringent parameters.

Although MSI is still selling its first model in the country in other places, it has categorically ruled out upgrading it. The M800 will be naturally phased out once emission norms are upgraded in rest of the country.

The Alto is MSI's best-selling car so far. However, in recent times, the monthly sales have fallen to about 20,000 units, including Alto K10, from about 30,000 units earlier due to factors like high interest rates and rising petrol costs. Huge stock of petrol cars are lying at the dealers level now.

In fact, MSI had last month stopped production of petrol models, like the Alto, M800, A-Star, Estilo and Omni for three days to prevent inventory pile up.

The company is at present undergoing its week-long annual maintenance shutdown, which started from June 25.

According to SIAM data, the company's car production last month fell by 8.42 per cent to 87,220 units.

Car sales in India grew at the slowest pace in seven months during May with just 2.78 per cent rise as high interest rates and petrol prices hit the market.

TCS to report highest growth, Wipro slowest in June quarter

Corporate India will start reporting earnings for the June quarter in a fortnight. IT companies will be the first to report their performance over the first three months of this fiscal. The 12 per cent depreciation of the rupee against the dollar in the quarter is likely to benefit all IT companies.

Investment bank Barclays says Wipro and HCL Tech are likely to see margin expansion from a weaker rupee. For TCS and Infosys, the gains are likely to be limited. All four are likely to report some forex losses on outstanding hedging contracts though.

Wipro is likely to deliver the slowest sequential dollar revenue growth and TCS the fastest followed by HCL Tech.

Here's what to expect from India's biggest IT firms in the June quarter.


1) TCS: Highest growth among the top four

The company is likely to report quarterly revenue growth of 1.7 per cent (quarter-on-quarter) in dollar terms. This incorporates the negative cross currency impact of 1.5 percentage points; in constant currency terms growth is projected at 3.2%.

Margin expansion at TCS due to the currency appreciation is likely to be limited due to the salary increases and the quarterly variable payouts in the quarter. Overall loss due to currency fluctuation could be close to Rs 25 crore in the current quarter.




2) Infosys: Currency impact should test guidance

It is likely to lower its FY13 revenue guidance (in dollar terms) to 6.5-8.5 per cent from 8-10 per cent. Infosys had guided for 0-1 per cent sequential top-line growth in constant currency terms for the June quarter, but might report only -0.5 per cent sequential growth due to the cross currency impact of 1.5 percentage points.

Margins are likely to show limited further upside from currency, in line with recent management commentary of investing back into the business.

However, weak rupee could boost earnings per share guidance for FY13 by 10-12 per cent. The company could report a net loss of $10 million on account of the rupee depreciation.


3) Wipro: Lowest sequential growth in the peer group

The company had guided to -1 per cent to +0.9 per cent sequential revenue growth for IT services in the June quarter, but is likely to show a 1.4% sequential decline because of cross currency impact. This includes the impact of cash flow hedges.

Wipro’s margin expansion due to currency is likely to be limited to 100 basis points; part of the gains from the rupee depreciation will be offset by cross currency impact and salary increases effected in April.

The company may guide for nearly 2 per cent sequential revenue growth.


4) HCL Tech: Benefiting from strong order backlog

The company’s performance in top-line growth is likely to remain strong. It may report 1.4 per cent (dollar terms) sequential revenue growth for the June quarter. Margins should expand by 70 basis points sequentially due to the weak rupee. The company could report a loss of nearly $10 million on account of forex losses.

Direct shaadi? Katrina stumps Salman in Ek Tha Tiger

 


If, like us, you've watched the just-released trailer of Ek Tha Tiger, you couldn't have failed to notice the witty repartee between real ex-flames and reel lovers Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan.

Especially this poser.

"Tumhari shaadi ho gayi?" (Are you married), asks Miss Kitty.

"Direct shaadi?", says the bemused Salman, "Yeh nahi poochoge ki girlfriend hai?" (Won't you ask me if I have a girlfriend)

Pat comes the answer. "Nahi. Ab tumhari umar shaadi ki ho gayi hai." (No, you are of an age to be married)

Nice one, Kat.

Revealed: Salman's fists of fury, Katrina's sex appeal in Ek Tha Tiger

And then there's the bit where Katrina introduces herself as Zoya, fondly known as Zee. Salman's sharp come back is to say he's called Doordarshan. She's not amused. Bad joke, she says. He's crestfallen.

Round one to Katrina.

Watch the trailer of Ek Tha Tiger here:

Over 10,000 messages back Assange's asylum in Ecuador

Over 10,000 messages back Assange's asylum in Ecuador
File picture
Quito: The Ecuadorian embassies in the United States and Britain have received over 10,000 messages in support of political asylum for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ecuadorian authorities announced on Tuesday.

"More than 10,000 emails have been received at the moment," Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs said in a public statement from Quito.

"Thousands of people asking the Ecuadorian government to accord asylum to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, sent a steady stream of messages saying why they support him," the statement added.

Quito received a demand for asylum from the Australian national, who took refuge in London's Ecuadorian embassy on June 19, escaping extradition to Sweden, where he has been charged with two cases of sexual assault.

Mr Assange worries that from Sweden, he will be extradited to the United States to face possible espionage charges, after releasing more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks site.

A letter in favour of the request for asylum was also addressed to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa by Just Foreign Policy, a US group advocating for civil liberties.

Among the signatures on the petition were those of film directors Michael Moore and Oliver Stone, actor Danny Glover and philosopher Noam Chomsky.

Maintaining that Mr Assange's only crime was doing journalism, the authors of the letter denounced what they believe to be an attack on freedom of the press and the public's right to know the truth about American foreign policy.

Mr Correa responded to the call for asylum on Tuesday, saying that Quito must first "analyze the judicial process in Sweden" and that "these things take time. It's not that simple."

That same day, Mr Correa met with his ambassador to Britain, Anna Alban, and Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino to discuss Mr Assange's request.

Mr Correa, a leftist leader critical of Washington, has already expressed sympathy for the WikiLeaks founder and said that his country will not accept instances of "political persecution."

North Korea girl dies saving Kim portraits

Pyongyang, North Korea: North Korean officials have posthumously honoured a 14-year-old girl who drowned in a flood while trying to save portraits of leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, RIA Novosti reported.

Han Hyon-Gyong, a schoolgirl from the eastern province of South Hamkyong, died on June 11 as she tried to take the portraits out of her flooded home, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on its website.

The paper said Han's parents and school teachers also received awards.

The daily hailed the regime "that nurtures such children", and also mentioned a farmer whose wife and children were killed in a landslide in 2007 while he was saving portraits of the Kims.

For designers of Tata Emo, no glitz, but plenty of promise

For designers of Tata Emo, no glitz, but plenty of promise
Tata Technologies' Emo concept, in a company parking lot in Novi, Mich.
Novi, Michigan: During a week when journalists queued for 10-minute test drives of the Tesla Model S electric sedan in Fremont, Calif., this reporter enjoyed a stint in another new E.V., albeit one with decidedly less curb appeal.

No flag-waving employees, no charismatic chief executives and no governors had congregated on June 19 around the Tata Emo concept, or Electric Mobility Study, in a parking lot in northern suburb of Detroit. Granted, the concept included only a notional motor-drive system, not a production unit. It was little more than a way to move the car on and off a stage.

"The Emo was built as a kind of calling card," said Peter Davis, the chief of design at Tata Technologies, a branch of the Tata Group conglomerate based in India. With offices in Singapore, Britain, Novi as well as Pune, India, the division provides engineering and design services to automakers and other manufacturers. The Emo resulted from a joint effort by teams in Pune and Novi.

Mr. Davis is a veteran of General Motors and Fiat design staffs. Also on hand in Novi was Nikunj Jain, a designer for Tata Technologies.

The Emo symbolizes a philosophy of designing and marketing electric cars that is very different from that employed by Tesla, or for that matter Nissan or Ford. Rather than addressing the top or middle of the market, the Emo is an effort to devise a bare-bones, low-priced E.V. In theory - no production plans have been made by Tata - the Emo would be priced around $20,000, excluding any applicable government incentives.

Mr. Davis stressed that the Emo did not represent an electrified Nano, the people's car built by Tata Motors that has met with limited success. Among Americans, Tata may be best known for the Nano, along with its ownership of Jaguar Land Rover.

For the teams involved, the goal was to provide the maximum amount of interior space in relation to the car's footprint. Mr. Davis restated Tata's performance estimates for the four-door supermini: a top speed of 65 miles per hour and a range of 100 miles. Engineers asserted that if it were tested by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Emo would beat the 112-miles-per-gallon-equivalent efficiency figure for the Mitsubishi i.

The car's steeply angled front and headlights create a face that is part wasp, part cobra. It garnered attention at the Detroit auto show in January, where it was displayed at the exhibit of the Michelin Challenge Design program.

The body and chassis were engineered to meet European and American safety standards, Mr. Davis said, but that did not suggest they were production-ready. "If we put it in production we would refine the aero," he said.

To get the most out of the space, the design team made some unconventional decisions. The rear doors open front to rear, offering easier access to the back, where the seats fold down for cargo. Meanwhile, the almost upright rear end does not include a hatch, but rather a single fixed polycarbonate panel with integrated taillights and other electronics.

For the driver, the car's most notable feature may be the steeply raked windshield. It seemed only about a half inch from this driver's head. Mr. Davis acknowledged that in production it would be altered. But visibility was excellent in all directions and the interior certainly felt capacious.

Windshield wipers cleverly park themselves not in the conventional manner, at the base of the windshield, but along the A-pillars to each side of the windshield, which simplifies the design of the hood. Though not a design first, Mr. Davis said it was representative of the small innovations in the car. The design team has identified 15 potential patents growing out of the Emo's design.

Its cabin includes a floating center console similar to that in Volvos. For the Michelin display the design team devised a series of interior options, with various materials and colors. In the spirit of designing the technology globally and the style locally, they brought in a local consultant, Sally Erickson Wilson, who drew a set of suggested color palettes, including hues inspired by the Detroit area's emblematic Pewabic Pottery.

The process of creating the Emo was also an exercise in cost management.

"The first thing we did was get rid of the paint shop," Mr. Davis said. To keep costs down, the Emo, like the Smart Fortwo, uses only integrally colored or powder-coated composite panels. Curb weight was held to under 1,000 kilograms, roughly 2,200 pounds. The process revealed the limits of the barebones approach; the battery in such a vehicle would account for 40 percent of its total cost, Mr. Davis said.

But as the price of batteries declines, Tata's lower-end strategy should become more attractive, Mr. Davis said. Defenders of E.V.'s see an analogue in the personal-computer industry of the early 1980s, when the microprocessor represented the critical cost.

To reduce power consumption, Mr. Davis said, the designers chose headlights of narrow LED strips. Under the impression these would require cooling, designers plotted an air channel between them, creating a claw like shape. "This turned out to be unnecessary," Mr. Davis said, but around the studio they proceeded to call the headlight shape "the lobster claw."

But Mr. Davis and Mr. Jain had no ready explanation for the pattern of the wheels, which appeared to combine the multiple arms of the Hindu deity Shiva with 1890s art nouveau representations of electrical sparks.
© 2012, The New York Times News Service

Abu Hamza is highest-ranked Indian in Lashkar-e-Taiba

Abu Hamza is highest-ranked Indian in Lashkar-e-Taiba
New Delhi: Abu Jundal aka Abu Hamza, the alleged 26/11 handler now being interrogated in Indian custody, is said to be the highest-ranked Indian in the deadly Lashkar-e-Taiba group. More details are now emerging about this man with 10 aliases.

Sources say Hamza, whose real name is Zabiuddin Ansari, was recruited by a Kashmir-based Lashkar operative in 2005. A young Ansari is said to have been indoctrinated in those post-Gujarat-riot years. He allegedly got involved in planning for the 26/11 Mumbai terror operation at the beginning of 2008.

Sources say Hamza, as the Indian in the group, was the one who trained the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on what to wear, what to say etc. Hamza, who belongs to Beed in Maharashtra, speaks Marathi, Urdu, Hindi and also a bit of Arabic.

Sources say interrogation has revealed that Hamza, as Abu Jundal the handler, met the 10 Mumbai attack terrorists twice. Once in the initial days, when he taught them Hindi. Then he met them a few days before the attack, when allegedly he briefed the terrorists on Mumbai - the roads, means of transport and the people. Hamza has reportedly said that the 10 terrorists found it difficult to comprehend how a single city could have several railway stations; Hamza helped them understand how to reach some of them.

He has reportedly said that as the attacks on Mumbai began, he was in a control room near the international airport in Karachi. Supervising the operation there, he has been quoted as saying, were ISI officers and Lashkar commanders including Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. He has reportedly said that he was in the 26/11 control room for just for one day - the first day of the operation - after which he was removed and asked to "take rest" by Lakhvi.

After Ajmal Kasab became the only terrorist to be captured alive during 26/11, Hamza has allegedly said that all handlers including him were asked to leave Pakistan. After 26/11, Hamza allegedly traveled out of Pakistan on a Pakistani passport issued in the name of Risat Ali. He operated in Saudi Arabia for about a month scouting for new recruits for the Lashkar, but US intelligence officials and India were alerted to him after he made a call to Pakistan, that was tracked down by the US. He was soon arrested and was duly deported from Saudi Arabia to Delhi and is now being interrogated by intelligence officers and the Delhi Police.

"We identified him almost a year ago...it was a well-guarded secret...we tracked him. I think the world appreciates how India is going about tracking every one of the 26/11 masterminds," Home Minister P Chidambaram said yesterday.

India is firm that Hamza's confessions so far indicate that Pakistani state actors were involved in the 26/11 terror operation. But Pakistan's advisor to the Interior Ministry Rehman Malik rejected Home Minister P Chidambaram's statement yesterday, saying neither his country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) nor any other state agency was involved in terror activities. Mr Malik tweeted today in reference to Abu Hamza, "Having a forged passport does not entitle someone to be a Pakistani." And then, "Pakistan and India needs to work together to act against these terrorists/extremists."

In discussions with India about its own investigation and trial for those connected to 26/11, Pakistan had told India that Abu Hamza had been arrested. When asked how Hamza had then managed to leave the country, Mr Malik said this was not the same man listed in a dossier shared between the two countries.

He said yesterday, "Hamza is Indian. India is failing to control its citizens...I told (Home Minister) Chidambaram that Hindu extremism is growing in India."

Mr Chidambaram had said, "He (Hamza) has confirmed that he was in the control room and he has named a few people who were in the control room...that confirms our suspicion that this was an organized effort which had some kind of state support. The argument that it was non-state actors who were behind the massacre is no longer valid."

Mr Malik reacted sharply, stating, "Each time India has accused the ISI of involvement in a terror attack, it has been proved wrong."

Pranab Mukherjee files nomination for President polls, seeks blessings - heavenly & political

Pranab Mukherjee files nomination for President polls, seeks blessings - heavenly & political
New Delhi: Dressed in his trademark bandhgala, a smiling Pranab Mukherjee, the UPA's candidate, filed his nomination papers for the post of the 13th President of India today. Seated next to Mr Mukherjee as he signed his nomination papers were Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi. UPA allies, friends like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav and senior Congressmen made up the rest of the party. (Who is Pranab Mukherjee?)

Mrs Gandhi signed the register, Mr Mukherjee many papers, which were then scrutinised by the returning officer. There are 480 important signatures on his four sets of nomination papers. Notably, Janata Dal(United) chief Sharad Yadav is the first signatory on one set; Mr Yadav's party is an important part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). He was however not present at Mr Mukherjee's nomination photo-op. (President Pranab? Papers filed with Sonia, PM: Top 10 facts)
After staking claim, Mr Mukherjee sought blessings - heavenly and political. "I only wish at this time that we have the blessings of god and cooperation of all at this juncture," he said.
Mr Mukherjee is supported by parties like the BSP and calculations at present give him a comfortable advantage with about 56 per cent votes in the electoral college. Missing today was key UPA ally Mamata Banerjee, but others like the DMK's TR Baalu and Farooq Abdullah of the National Congress were there. So was Ram Vilas Paswan. Among the 480 MPs and MLAs that have proposed and seconded his nomination are Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, union ministers, chief ministers and Congress Legislature Party leaders. Even the Shiv Sena is supporting his candidacy.

Mr Mukherjee has wider support than mere political alignments would allow as he is expected to be a political president. His candidacy came not without drama - some brinkmanship from Mamata Banerjee which included heart-in-the-mouth moments as Mulayam Singh Yadav seemed to waver. His own party seemed undecided for long whether it could spare a man who wore many hats. In the end, however, Mr Mukherjee did not see a repeat of 2007 - when the Congress had said it could not spare him for Rashtrapati Bhavan - and was declared the UPA's candidate.

He has split not just the NDA, but has neatly sliced through the Left too - the CPM and Forward Bloc is supporting him, the CPI and RSP say they cannot and are abstaining. The UPA's one loss - Mamata Banerjee, who, however, has still not said an emphatic yes to Mr Mukherjee's challenger Purno Sangma either. Trinamool Congress sources say she will remain "equidistant."

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, who is Mr Mukherjee's authorised election agent, told NDTV that the former Finance Minister will not file an asset declaration as it is not required under law. He, however, added that it is for Mr Mukherjee to decide if he wants to declare his assets at a later stage. Polling will be held on July 19 and India will have a new President by July 22.

Later this afternoon, Mr Sangma, who is supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal, will also file his papers in what is expected to be an equal show of strength.

The numbers don't favour the former Lok Sabha Speaker, but he is backed by the BJP, and two powerful Chief Ministers - Tamil Nadu's J Jayalalithaa and her AIADMK, and Odisha's Naveen Patnaik and his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and he is expected to wear that support on his sleeve when he files his papers this afternoon. High-profile BJP leaders like Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Ms Jayalalithaa and Mr Patnaik and Punjab Chief Minister and Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal are likely to be present.

After today's grand photo opportunities as nomination papers are filed, both candidates will get into campaign mode. For Mr Mukherjee, that will mean consolidating his numbers. He will fly by a private jet arranged by the Congress first to Chennai and then to Bangalore and Hyderabad as he kicks off his campaign.

Mr Sangma is expected to ensure a high decibel contest. He quit his party, the NCP, which as a UPA ally is staunchly supporting Mr Mukherjee.

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

Hillary Clinton's last tour as a rock-star diplomat

On May 3, the day after an artful deal to end the diplomatic crisis over Chen Guangcheng, China's now-famous dissident, unravelled spectacularly, Hillary Rodham Clinton followed a scrum of Chinese ministers around an exhibition of clean cook stoves. These are safer, portable alternatives to the crude stoves used by hundreds of millions of women in the developing world - at grave risk to themselves, their children and the planet. Not long after becoming secretary of state in 2009, Clinton took up the cook stove cause, one of what she describes as "smart power" issues - though sceptical veterans of American foreign policy tend to deride them as soft more than smart.

In September 2010, Clinton announced the creation of a partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to provide 100 million cleaner and more efficient stoves around the world by 2020, and she has since used every opportunity to implore world leaders to adopt policies to encourage their use. Among them was China's top foreign-policy official, Dai Bingguo, with whom she first raised the issue over lunch at the State Department in May 2011. Clinton can recite the arguments by rote: The smoke from poorly ventilated stoves kills nearly two million people a year, more than malaria. Foraging for wood consumes the time and effort of women and children and exposes them to attack. The stoves are a significant source of black carbon in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. After a year of discussion, Dai agreed to put it on the agenda for their annual meetings this year in Beijing, raising the prospect that China, which accounts for more than a quarter of the world's deaths from the old stoves, would become the 33rd country to join the partnership that Clinton started.

The Chinese are fussy about diplomacy and protocol - they like neither surprises nor confrontation - and months of preparation went into the meetings in Beijing. Then late at night on April 25, a week before Clinton was to arrive, she held an emergency conference call over secure lines with her top advisers at the State Department, arriving at a decision that put the entire visit at risk, not to mention years of effort to improve relations with China. Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer who endured a prison term and ongoing harassment, had escaped house arrest in his village in Shandong Province and made his way to the outskirts of Beijing. An American diplomat secretly met with him there and reported back to Washington that he needed urgent medical treatment in the only safe place imaginable: the American Embassy in Beijing, where a doctor could examine him. After her aides briefed the White House, which traditionally does not involve itself in consular affairs, Clinton agreed. Hours later, the Americans spirited him in. The next challenge was to resolve Chen's fate in a way that wouldn't scuttle essential Chinese cooperation on the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the worsening conflict in Syria, the fighting between Sudan and South Sudan, cyber-attacks emanating from China - and cook stoves. No one close to her would dare put it quite this way, but a question at the heart of her legacy is this: As important as the plight of Chen might be, what is it compared to the deaths of nearly two million people a year from toxic smoke in their kitchens?

What has been most striking about Clinton's tenure as secretary of state is at once how suited for the job she has proved to be and how improbable it once seemed, even to her. "Not in a million years," she replied by e-mail in November 2008 when her political aide Philippe Reines first told her that President-elect Barack Obama was considering her appointment, despite having derided her experience in foreign affairs as first lady during the campaign. His experience, Obama said during the primaries, was "grounded in understanding how the world sees America, from living overseas and traveling overseas, and having family beyond our shores" and "not just of what world leader I went and talked to in the ambassador's house, who I had tea with." It's true that Clinton lacked the foreign-policy experience of recent secretaries like Condoleezza Rice, Colin L. Powell or Madeleine K. Albright. Nor was she personally close to Obama in the way James A. Baker III was to President George H. W. Bush. What she possessed was energy, the dogged loyalty she displayed campaigning for Obama after she lost and, not insignificant, her fame. Clinton vacillated for days, at one point deciding to decline. (Her aides say Obama would not take no for an answer; he avoided at least one phone call from her, the story goes, by having an aide explain he was in the bathroom.) Ultimately, as the chief of protocol of the United States, Capricia Penavic Marshall, who has worked with Clinton since she was first lady, told me: "When asked to serve, she does. And her president asked."

The buzz at the time was that Obama was building a "team of rivals" to oversee national security - not just Clinton but also Vice President Joseph R. Biden. They all had "their own public profiles and their own public histories and their own policy views," as Obama's national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, told me. The meme was a presumptuous allusion to Abraham Lincoln's quarrelsome war cabinet, and the Beltway punditocracy waited eagerly for the egos to clash and the backstabbing to begin. "This is a building full of people, on a political level, who tried to prevent him from being president," one of Clinton's aides said of the State Department. "And that" - meaning the White House - "is a building full of people who tried to prevent her from being president." Three and a half years later, the anticipated schisms have not appeared - "much to the chagrin of everybody who'd love to know on the outside where the disagreements are," Melanne S. Verveer, another close aide, said.

Obama and Clinton have instead led the least discordant national-security team in decades, despite enormous challenges on almost every front. They share a vision of diplomacy that is high-minded in its support for democratic rights (in Libya and elsewhere) but hard-headed when those values run up against American security interests (Egypt and Bahrain) or other limits of American power (Syria). They have handled crises with neither rancour nor, for the most part, public leaks intended to shape their private debates. Clinton set the tone from the start, enforcing respect for the man who bested her on the campaign trail. "Early on, when there were people around complaining about the Obama folks, she wouldn't brook it at all," Andrew J. Shapiro, Clinton's former Senate aide and now an assistant secretary of state, told me. The message "was delivered quite clearly." "We work for the president," he recalled her saying.

Not that the two have agreed on everything. Clinton, for example, strongly advocated keeping more troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior White House official. Publicly, though, she unwaveringly supported the president's determination to bring to an end America's increasingly unpopular wars, withdrawing the remaining American troops from Iraq last December and scheduling the withdrawals from Afghanistan by 2014.

The re-election of Russia's paramount leader, Vladimir V. Putin, after a campaign orchestrated to produce only one possible winner, prompted one of the sharpest internal debates so far. In December, Clinton denounced parliamentary elections that were a fraud-tainted prelude to Putin's return to the presidency. "The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she said in Bonn, Germany, prompting Putin to suggest that she had signalled - somehow - the protesters into the Russian streets.

After Putin won re-election to the presidency on March 4, some at the State Department wanted a new denunciation, arguing that Putin respected only toughness. The White House, however, did not want to make relations with Russia any worse by questioning the legitimacy of his victory. Too much else was at stake for the administration to pick a fight over something it could not change. And so three days later, Clinton appeared at the State Department and, whatever her own misgivings, dutifully voiced the administration's accommodating line, even as tens of thousands of Russians took to the street in protest. "The election had a clear winner," she said, "and we are ready to work with President-elect Putin." "The thing about Hillary," a senior official in Bill Clinton's administration once told me privately, "is that she is always the Girl Scout."

By the time Clinton landed in Beijing on May 2 for the third round of what's called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the two countries had come to an understanding about what to do with Chen. After days of secret discussions, during which no official from either country acknowledged publicly that he was in the embassy, Chen agreed to leave the embassy and get treatment at a hospital where his wife and children had been taken to rejoin him. The Chinese agreed to allow Chen to study in a university and promised an investigation into the abuse he suffered, even as they denounced American interference in China's internal affairs and demanded an apology Clinton had no intention of giving. "They had to do that," one senior official said, explaining the Chinese aversion to the appearance of making concessions to the Americans.

Clinton called Chen as he was being taken in a van to the hospital, and in his excitement, he blurted out, "I want to kiss you." "I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the United States Embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values," Clinton said in a brief statement. She then went to dinner with Dai Bingguo and their two senior aides, Cui Tiankai and Kurt M. Campbell, who had hashed out the arrangement over three sleep-deprived days. Even as they ate and discussed the agenda of the coming meetings - including the cook stoves exhibition - Chen had second thoughts, having seen his wife and spoken to other dissidents who told him he had made a mistake by leaving the embassy. Using three cell phones the Americans had given him, he began calling supporters and even journalists, upending the carefully orchestrated narrative. He said he no longer felt safe. He denied, untruthfully, that he said he wanted to kiss Clinton. (He later explained he was embarrassed by having spoken so intimately to her.) Most of all, after saying he wanted to stay in China, he now made clear that he wanted to leave.

It was only after dinner that Clinton learned that her diplomatic triumph was turning into a debacle. She met with her aides, scrambling to learn why Chen's mood had changed so radically. And then she went through the next day acting as if nothing had happened, despite the "massive elephant in the room," as one senior aide put it. With Dai, she toured the cook stoves exhibit, listening earnestly to the minister of science and technology, Wan Gang, explain technology she already understood. She and Dai also had three lengthy meetings and a working lunch, covering issues including Syria, Iran and North Korea, China's territorial ambitions in the South China Sea and American complaints about Chinese cyber-attacks, but not Chen. "Even beside all the happy stuff," the senior official said, referring to the cook stoves, "there was an unbelievable amount of very pointed, specific business to do with these guys." Meanwhile, Campbell and others couldn't reach Chen, who was undergoing medical tests for much of the day.

Even Clinton remarked to her aides about the mind-bending experience of taking on so many disparate topics simultaneously, cook stoves one moment, grave security threats the next and then the fate of a dissident whose case, the senior official added, "just exploded into an absolute circus." Sympathizers showed up at Chen's hospital, some wearing dark glasses in solidarity. In Washington, human rights advocates and Republicans, including Obama's challenger, Mitt Romney, excoriated the administration for abandoning Chen and failing to receive assurances from the Chinese about his safety. That night Clinton and her aides agreed to ask for another meeting with Dai the next morning, ahead of her meetings with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "We woke up Friday not knowing still if any of them were going to be cancelled" because of the public furore over Chen, the official said.

During the meeting, Clinton informed the Chinese that Chen, before dawn in Beijing but Thursday afternoon in Washington, had telephoned Bob Fu, a Chinese activist who works for the ChinaAid organization in America. Fu was then in the middle of an emergency Congressional hearing, and he put Chen on speaker, translating for the lawmakers. The Chinese, who had honoured their part of the bargain to allow Chen to attend university in China, "were floored" to hear it, according to one person in the meeting. Clinton then had to explain that the United States now wanted Chen to study in the United States. Critically she did not mention the subject of asylum, allowing China to save face. The Chinese were furious at the public scandal they were now facing but ultimately relented, having decided, as Clinton had, that they had more at stake in the relationship than one man's fate. Clinton went on to meet China's top leaders without again mentioning the blind dissident. Sixteen days later, exactly as arranged, Chen and his family flew to Newark, and he took up residency at New York University.

A truth often overlooked in the Beltway obsession with assigning blame and credit is that in any administration, the president ultimately determines foreign policy. This was true even under George W. Bush, despite Dick Cheney's best efforts to create a separate foreign-policy apparatus inside the Office of the Vice President. The job of the secretary of state is to help shape and then carry out the president's policies, something her aides emphasize repeatedly.

Clinton and Obama do not seem particularly close personally, though in addition to cabinet and National Security Council meetings, they also meet once a week whenever she is in Washington, joined usually by Biden and Donilon. "It's a relationship that has evolved, as you would expect, and it's one where - and I don't say this lightly - the president has total confidence and trust in Secretary Clinton, in her advice, in her policy views and in her representation of the United States," Donilon told me. "It's a total trust, and that, by the by, is also historically not always the case." Despite their differences in upbringing, age and temperament, they share, in his words, the "common experience" of running for president, living in the White House and raising children there, "of being famous people." When it comes to policy, both she and Obama are guided by pragmatism, a non-ideological, case-by-case approach. It's one reason that no one can really define an Obama or Clinton doctrine and why, at times, the administration has frustrated those who would have had it act more forcefully when street protests auguring the Arab Spring swept Iran in 2009 or now, as Syria savagely represses its opposition.

Clinton was the first elected official to become secretary of state since Edmund S. Muskie served a turbulent eight months at the end of the Carter administration, when Iran held Americans hostage and the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. Whatever she might have lacked in scholarship or experience in foreign affairs, she has made up for with a politician's touch, inside the State Department and around the world. She has an acute attention to detail, remembering names and personal details. In a meeting, she once recalled, unprompted, an obscure article about diplomacy in tough places written by a young foreign-service officer who twice served in Iraq, Aaron D. Snipe. Two people who work in the building told me of instances in which she called to express condolences when relatives died. These gestures and her strong advocacy for the budget at the State Department have re-energized the American Foreign Service, which felt beleaguered under President George W. Bush. Clinton makes a point of visiting American embassies and consulates - 109 so far - wherever she travels to thank the diplomats and their families, as well as the local staff who make up most of the work force abroad. She became the first secretary to hold special Christmas parties at the State Department for the families of diplomats with hardship posts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On matters of policy, her political experience and her travels as first lady - having tea, as it were - have served her in ways few anticipated. When she travelled to Uzbekistan in October, Clinton reminded the country's authoritarian leader, Islam Karimov, of her previous visit in 1997. "That was such a great trip," she bantered with Karimov, who has the demeanour of the Soviet apparatchik he once was. The next day she visited a women's health clinic where she had been 14 years earlier. The median outside was newly sodded with grass. On a placard inside was a picture of a younger Clinton. "I'm really impressed how far you've come," she said after surveying the clinic's medical equipment. Uzbekistan's human rights record is abysmal, and Clinton raised it in her meetings, but she won Karimov's support for expanding the flow of supplies for the military operation in Afghanistan through what's called the Northern Distribution Network, which became vital when Pakistan closed its borders to NATO materiel.

"The art of diplomacy is to get other people to want what you want," Madeleine Albright told me. She and others say that Clinton's skill as a politician turned secretary is her appreciation that a foreign leader, even an autocrat like Karimov, has his own constituencies to satisfy, his own political deals to make. "I think that she is brilliant at connecting with people on a political level," Albright said. "No question, she knows how to do what I think is essential: putting herself in other people's shoes."

More recently, at the NATO meeting in Chicago in May, she found herself spending most of a tense meeting with Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, discussing, among other things, Pakistan's byzantine parliamentary politics. Relations with Pakistan have been one of the administration's failures, in large part a result of its greatest success: the killing of Osama bin Laden in a raid that surprised the Pakistanis and, as even American officials acknowledge, violated their sovereignty. Clinton has laboured to get the relationship back on track - twice visiting Pakistan last year - only for new crises to erupt, first an American airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani troops at a border outpost and more recently the sentencing of a Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency in the hunt for Bin Laden.

In a conference room at the convention center near downtown Chicago, Clinton pressed Zardari to reopen the supply lines to Afghanistan and act more aggressively against Islamic insurgents who use the country as a base to kill Americans. When Zardari complained that his hands were tied, she rebuffed him. According to a senior official who attended the meeting, Clinton said: "You can't hide behind: 'Oh, it's too difficult. The politics are too difficult.' " She offered ways for him to overcome the most contentious issue for Pakistani politicians, but still Zardari demurred. American drone strikes that were briefly suspended leading up to the meeting then resumed in earnest, even before Zardari returned home.

At times, Clinton's empathy - and her relationships developed over more than two decades of international prominence - have come at a cost. As first lady and after, Clinton developed a friendship with Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egypt's former leader, Hosni Mubarak. When protests against his autocratic rule erupted in January 2011, Clinton's initial response was to express support for Mubarak's government. It was a misstep that took months to overcome and even now resonates among Egyptians who believe the United States supported Mubarak far too long and for the most cynical reasons. "Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," she said at the time. Mubarak had long been an ally of the United States, and Mrs. Mubarak was a like-minded champion of women's issues, but as Clinton has said on several occasions since the Arab Spring, those who fail to heed popular sentiment will end up "on the wrong side of history."

The disciplined decision-making apparatus under Obama has made it difficult to measure where Clinton has wielded the greatest influence. After three and a half years in office, though, her greatest legacy has been the remaking of American diplomacy in her own fashion, shaped as much by her own personality and fame as by a guiding philosophy. A White House official told me it was too soon for Obama to consider who might succeed Clinton if he were to win a second term, but the names most often mentioned only highlight her uniqueness: Donilon, Senator John Kerry and Susan E. Rice, the American representative at the United Nations. All are capable and have their strengths, but none match Clinton's celebrity.

"I would argue that Mrs. Clinton is perhaps the most significant secretary of state since Dean Acheson, who helped unify the relationship between modern Europe and the United States," Eric E. Schmidt, the chairman of Google, gushed as he introduced her at a conference on Internet freedom in The Hague in December (at the end of a six-day trip in which she delivered remarks or speeches 26 times, on topics ranging from the future of Afghanistan to gay rights around the world). Even some Republicans in Congress acknowledge the skills she has brought to the job, though they remain critical of many administration policies. "I think she's represented our nation well," Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, who as a member of the House served as one of 13 managers in the 1998 impeachment trial of Clinton's husband, told me in an interview in his Senate office. "She is extremely well respected throughout the world, handles herself in a very classy way and has a work ethic second to none."

In the administration's reluctant, limited waging of war in Libya, Clinton initially had her own doubts about intervention, including proposals to enforce a no-fly zone over the country. Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense, and the generals also feared being dragged into another costly war in an Islamic country. As Qaddafi's forces pressed in on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, though, Obama gathered his advisers in the White House Situation Room on a Tuesday afternoon - with Clinton participating via a secure telephone line while she was in Egypt - and decided the United States could not stand by while Benghazi was overrun. "This is not what we do," Obama said, according to someone in the room.

It was Obama, not Clinton, who led the country into the war, though it was left to Clinton and Susan Rice to win enough votes at the United Nations Security Council and to persuade allies like Britain and France that a no-fly zone meant more than a limited intervention.

Clinton's message to them was blunt. The intervention they favoured meant the use of overwhelming force at the outset; it meant killing people on the ground. By Saturday, the United States and NATO struck, even as Clinton returned from her second trip to Paris. With determination and abundant miles in the air, she forged an unwieldy diplomatic and military alliance, at once cajoling and reassuring leaders as disparate as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar. And she held it together through the next seven months, even as officials in the White House grumbled that the conflict was grinding on far longer than anyone had expected.

When Tripoli fell in August and Qaddafi was killed in October, some of the same officials complained that she, not the president, was getting too large a share of the public credit. "Libya was a good showcase into who she is," Lindsey Graham told me. "I said at one time during this debate, Thank God for strong women."

That success has haunted the administration when it comes to the slaughter in Syria. Clinton's aides express frustration - at least privately - that President Bashar al-Assad remains in power nearly a year after she and Obama said he must go. A nagging criticism of Obama's foreign policy has been the willingness, even preference, to pursue its goals collectively, relying on the United Nations and other international organizations for legal and moral authority. It is one reason that the administration has found it difficult to come up with a workable strategy to deal with Assad. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker last year quoted an Obama adviser describing the approach in Libya as "leading from behind." The phrase has stuck because it contains an element of truth - the administration does not want to lead the United States into another war in the Muslim world - but also because it encapsulates the bumper-sticker view of Obama's Republican critics that he has abdicated American leadership in the world.

Clinton dismissed this when I asked her about it in an interview in her large office on the seventh floor of the State Department. She started by noting that NATO and the military alliances with Japan and South Korea have been bedrocks of national security through every Republican and Democratic administration since World War II. In "21st-century statecraft," though, "the general understanding, which cuts across parties, is that the United States can't solve all of the problems in the world," she said. "But the problems in the world can't be solved without the United States. And therefore, we have to husband our resources, among which is this incredibly valuable asset of global leadership, and figure out how we can best deploy it." She cited the role of the Arab League - once marginal and mostly dysfunctional - in forging international consensus for the intervention in Libya. "The Arab League was not prepared to work with NATO, work with the United States," she explained of nudging others to the forefront of international action. "But we've worked very hard, and I certainly have worked hard, to create an openness to that, and I think it's in America's interest."

Clinton's is a humbler view of foreign policy that, Republican criticisms aside, seems in tune with American sentiment. After all, not many Americans are clamouring for a war in Syria. To the extent that foreign policy influences voters at all, Obama has a record of successes abroad - from ending the war in Iraq to killing Osama bin Laden to overthrowing Muammar el-Qaddafi - as well as failures, including the early effort to jump-start peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which has soured relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to this day. The confrontation over Iran's nuclear program went from a simmer to a boil this year, with Netanyahu openly pressing the administration to draw distinct lines that would trigger a military attack. The administration instead continues to rest its hopes on a diplomatic solution after three new rounds of talks between world powers and Iran in Istanbul in April, Baghdad in May and Moscow in June. Clinton described the administration's efforts over Iran as "the hard shoe leather of diplomacy."

Getting to this point was possible only after years of building consensus for punishing sanctions and increasing the isolation for Iran's leaders. "There was nothing flashy about it," Clinton told me. "It just had to be ground out. It was the ground game, so to speak. But it laid the groundwork for what we now have, which is a quite extraordinary commitment to imposing very tough sanctions, both multilateral and unilateral, on Iran as part of a concerted effort to persuade them to change their commitment to acquire nuclear weapons." William J. Burns, a career diplomat who rose to deputy secretary of state, told me: "She's not inhibited by problems. If you're secretary of state, inevitably, every day into your in-box comes a lot of really nasty problems, many of them intractable. The natural inclination is to run away from them. And I've never seen that in her."

When she gathered Burns and others in her office for a senior staff meeting at the start of this year, Clinton had neatly, compactly written out a to-do list that covered four yellow legal-pad pages. They went through it, nation by nation, conflict by conflict, not just the major ones in the news, but also those that have simmered for decades, like the partition of Cyprus.

It spoke to her focus and discipline, but also the urgency of time running out. Clinton has said many, many times - on the record, off the record - that she will step down at the end of Obama's first term, and yet few can imagine that will be the end of her political career. Such has been her success as secretary that when Obama's popularity ebbed last year, a spate of "what if" stories pondered whether she would have made a better president. Those were followed by more suggesting - fantasizing, really - that Obama would drop Biden and put her on the ticket this year. Clinton herself dismissed it as ridiculous, and senior White House officials told me that the notion misunderstood Obama's temperament and affection for Biden. Now there is speculation that she could mount a presidential bid in 2016, regardless of Obama's fate in November. Some administration officials privately acknowledge that she would instantly be the presumptive front-runner, only 69 in November 2016 and more iconic than ever.

Meantime, for all the world's crises, Clinton seems to be enjoying herself immensely, more relaxed as America's top diplomat than perhaps at any other time in her public life. At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, in April - infamous now for the behaviour of Secret Service agents detailed to protect the president - she joined her staff for a birthday party at a nightclub called Cafe Havana, where she danced and tossed back beer. ("Swillary," The New York Post declared.) Around the same time, two communications specialists in Washington, Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, created an Internet meme with a black-and-white photo of Clinton in dark glasses, reading her Blackberry on the C-17 that took her to Libya last year. The two juxtaposed photographs of other officials and celebrities and imagined hilarious exchanges. "She's going to love the new Justin Bieber video!" one caption reads under a picture of Obama and Biden. "Back to work, boys," Clinton texts back. Far from taking offense or ignoring it, as she might once have, Clinton submitted her own caption and met Smith and Lambe at the State Department. "ROFL @ ur tumblr! g2g - scrunchie time. ttyl?"

Clinton told me she had not yet made specific plans for her future, but then revealed some, or "pieces of things," as she put it. She intends to write another book and to pursue philanthropy, championing women and girls, as ever. She hinted that people had floated some ideas already, "but there's too much to do. I can't stop and worry about what's next." She sounds sincere when she says she simply wants a rest after four decades of public life. On a lovely spring evening in Rome last year, Clinton joined the traveling press corps for bellinis at Harry's Bar on Via Vittorio Veneto and was asked, again, what she intended to do next. She laughed it off as always, saying she would love to return and linger right there. "What sentient being wouldn't?" she told me later, granting permission to describe what had been an off-the-record happy hour. It doesn't really seem likely, if only because it is difficult for those who know her best to imagine her stopping for long. It would be foolish to assume this is Clinton's last act.

"I have no doubt about the fact that whatever she does, she will be out there working on the causes that she's passionate about," Melanne Verveer, who has known her for four decades, said. "I think the demands on her, the requests to her - if she doesn't engage in politics anymore, if that is truly behind her - will be so great. In many ways she's become a world brand. And you know, how the Hillary brand gets used, I think, remains to be seen."