Clinton: Economy, climate are key issues

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed into meetings with senior Chinese officials today to press the country’s leaders to cooperate on climate change, the world financial crisis and security threats such as North Korea.

Clinton was to see China’s foreign minister, prime minister and president and tour an innovative geothermal energy plant in Beijing on the last stop of her inaugural overseas trip as America’s top diplomat.

Ahead of her talks, she told reporters that China could play a major role in stemming global warming, improving the economic outlook and addressing threats such as North Korea’s nuclear program and tenuous security situations in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And she signaled that those issues would likely take precedence in her discussions ahead of traditional U.S. concerns about human rights about which Clinton said both sides already knew the other’s positions. Her stance drew immediate fire from rights groups who said she was squandering Washington’s leverage with Beijing.

“I think there is a lot of room for cooperation, which we will be seeking,” she told reporters just before arriving in China, referring to the financial situation.

Clinton stressed the importance of dealing with climate change with China, which has overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, as well as with the nations she visited earlier on her tour of Asia.

“So many of the opportunities for clean energy, technology and the like are going to come out of this region of the world,” she said. “Japan, South Korea and China are uniquely situated to be part of the answer to the problem of global climate change.”

“How we engage them, particularly China, is going to be an incredibly important part of our diplomatic outreach,” Clinton said.

On security and counterterrorism, she said she would be looking for Beijing to take a more active role in convincing North Korea to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and cool rising tensions between Pyongyang, Seoul and Tokyo.