TOKYO: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is hoping to revitalize U.S. economic and development ties with Southeast Asia as she visits Indonesia during her first overseas trip as America's top diplomat. In Jakarta on Wednesday and Thursday in the second leg of her trip, Clinton intends to announce plans to step up Washington's engagement with a region that often felt slighted by the Bush administration.Clinton also plans to use the stop to continue the Obama administration's efforts to rehabilitate America's image abroad, particularly among Muslims. Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic nation, and it has personal ties for President Barack Obama,who spent part of his childhood living there.Clinton will visit the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat in Jakarta and is likely to signal U.S. intent to sign the regional bloc's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Clinton will also pledge to attend the group annual foreign ministers meeting in Thailand this year, U.S. officials said.
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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