Debate rages over foreign-crisis experience

WASHINGTON — Surrounded by military leaders in a Cabinet-style setting Thursday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she has "crossed the threshold" of foreign-policy experience to serve as commander-in-chief.

Supporters of rival Sen. Barack Obama fired back immediately, arguing that the former first lady's trips abroad hardly constituted a practice run for managing global crises.

"She was never asked to do the heavy lifting" when meeting with foreign leaders, said Susan Rice, an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration who now is advising Obama. "She wasn't asked to move the mountain or deliver a harsh message or a veiled threat. It was all gentle prodding or constructive reinforcement. And it would not have been appropriate for her to do the heavy lifting."

The debate over readiness for the global arena is emerging as the flash point in the race for the Democratic nomination, crystallized by Clinton's ad asking who is best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. call to the White House in a crisis.

Clinton says she is the answer, arguing that Obama's major achievement was his opposition to the Iraq war in 2002.

"I have said that Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign," Clinton said Thursday. "I will bring a lifetime of experience, and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002."

Indeed, Obama doesn't have much in the way of experience managing foreign crises, nor does Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee. In fact, it is rare for any president to have had that kind of experience before coming into office.

In Clinton's case, she may well have exercised influence on foreign policy that is hard to document because she had a unique opportunity to offer private counsel to President Clinton as his spouse.

But while she represented the United States on the world stage while first lady, there is scant evidence she played a pivotal role in major foreign-policy decisions.

Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples, Clinton said she "helped to bring peace" to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited "standing up" to the Chinese government on women's rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia after the Dayton peace accords.

Earlier, she and her husband claimed she had advocated on behalf of a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda to stop the genocide there.

But her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was primarily to encourage activism among women's groups there, a contribution the lead U.S. negotiator described as "helpful" but that an Irish historian who has written extensively about conflict dismissed as "ancillary" to the process.

The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, according to the general who hosted her.

Whatever her private conversations with the president may have been, key foreign-policy officials say U.S. military intervention in Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton administration's deliberations.

Canadian report points at Clinton, too

TORONTO — Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff said someone in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign gave Canada back-channel assurances that her harsh words about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were for political show, according to a Canadian Press report.

It comes just days after a Canadian government memo stated Barack Obama's senior economic adviser told officials the Illinois senator's own comments about NAFTA were for "political positioning."

On Wednesday, the Canadian Press quoted an unidentified source at Canada's CTV television network as saying that Ian Brodie, Harper's chief of staff, made the comment last week to a CTV crew during a media gathering to discuss Canada's budget.

According to a person with knowledge of the incident, the source was a CTV journalist.

According to the report, a CTV reporter asked Brodie about remarks by Clinton and Obama that they would seek to renegotiate NAFTA.

"He said someone from Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt," the journalist quoted Brodie as saying.

On Thursday, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said the campaign "flatly denied" the suggestion.

— The Associated Press