JAKARTA: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Wednesday in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, on her first mission to start mending US ties with the Islamic world.She was to meet Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda and leaders of the Jakarta-based Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) later in the day on the second leg of her four-nation trip through Asia.Wearing a red coat over a black blouse and trousers, Clinton touched down under heavy skies and was greeted by senior officials and a choir of female students from US President Barack Obama's old primary school in Jakarta.Obama, who spent part of his childhood here in the late 1960s, has promised to improve relations with the Islamic world after the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan under his predecessor George W. Bush."We have a responsibility to speak out and to work with the Muslim world on behalf of positive change and to enlist the help of Muslims around the world against the extremists," Clinton told students in Japan on Tuesday.In her first trip to a Muslim country in her new role, Clinton would also meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Thursday before leaving for South Korea and China.Obama's personal connection with Indonesia has made him hugely popular in the country of 234 million people, and expectations are high he will visit early in his presidency to reach out to the Muslim world.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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