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It was brief, it was unscheduled and it was not substantive, but a meeting Tuesday between Richard C. Holbrooke, a presidential envoy, and an Iranian diplomat marked the first face-to-face encounter between the Obama administration and the government of Iran.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed that Mr. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, greeted Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Mohammad Mehdi Akhondzadeh, on the sidelines of a major conference here devoted to Afghanistan.

“It was cordial, unplanned and they agreed to stay in touch,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters at the end of the conference. “I myself did not have any direct contact with the Iranian delegation.”

The United States will call for "even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast in Venezuela.

Washington remained concerned about what she called Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons," which could "be very destabilizing in the Middle East and beyond," Clinton told the private television network Globovision.

"We would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," Clinton said in the interview, which was broadcast late Tuesday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the United States was now seeking “amnesty” for two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea, a remark that suggests that the Obama administration was admitting the women’s culpability in a bid to secure their freedom.

“The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday morning during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with State Department employees. “What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible.”

The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing “hostile acts.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Pakistan of abdicating to the Taleban by allowing them to control parts of the country. Mrs Clinton told a congressional panel the situation in Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Pakistan of abdicating to the Taleban by allowing them to control parts of the country.

Mrs Clinton told a congressional panel the situation in Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security. She said extremists were being allowed to control territory such as the Swat Valley, in north-western Pakistan. She also called Pakistan's judicial system corrupt, adding that it has only limited power in the countryside.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made a surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday to reassure Iraqi leaders that the Obama White House would refrain from withdrawing its troops from urban areas if renewed violence continued to worsen.Clinton's visit, her first since being appointed in January, followed a sharp surge in attacks over the past three days that left as many as 155 dead and prompted fears that recent security gains could unravel.

The attacks, which have mostly taken place in and around Baghdad, have sparked concern that the planned US drawback in July could destabilise areas which the withdrawal was meant to consolidate.

"I think that these suicide bombings are, unfortunately in a tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction," she told reporters travelling with her. "I think in Iraq there will always be political conflicts, there will always be, as in any society, sides drawn between different factions, but I really believe Iraq as a whole is on the right track."

As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.

Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”

None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)

The Zionist Organization of America issued a statement on Friday calling the Cairo speech “strongly biased” against Israel. A statement by the organization’s president, Morton A. Klein, said Mr. Obama’s remarks “may well signal the beginning of a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.”

Some of the concerns that supporters of Israel voiced about Mr. Obama before he took office began to dissipate as he assembled a staff that includes a White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who was a civilian volunteer in the Israeli armed forces, and a secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who established strong pro-Israel credentials during her years as a senator from New York.

Mrs. Clinton said last week that a freeze meant no “natural growth exceptions,” and some Israeli officials have contended that the Obama administration is, in effect, telling Israeli settlers that they cannot have babies. Most Middle East experts say the term “natural growth” applies to actual construction of additional units within the settlements’ existing boundaries. “We can’t tell people that they can’t have a child,” Mr. Ackerman said.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that Israel could not accept the Obama administration's demand to "completely" halt activity in West Bank settlements. "We have no intention to change the demographic balance in Judea and Samaria," Lieberman said during his talks with the secretary of state in Washington. "Everywhere people are born, people die, and we cannot accept a vision of stopping completely the settlements. We have to keep the natural growth."

Meanwhile, Clinton reiterated that the U.S. viewed a total settlement freeze as "important and essential" step toward achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mitchell has said a key element has been trying to pin down exactly what Israel means by the "natural growth" of settlements that Netanyahu has said he will defend. In principle, Netanyahu says he wants growing families to be able to accommodate their children in the towns that Israelis have built.

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman held talks on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a US official said

Suleiman, who has not spoken to the media, met Tuesday with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell as well as with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, officials said.

An Egyptian official who declined to be named said Suleiman was in Washington to seek a softer stance on the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, so that it can participate in an internationally-recognized Palestinian unity government.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that US policy towards Cuba has failed, welcoming an offer to talk from the Cuban president.

She said the US was "taking a serious look" at how to respond to President Raul Castro's comments, which she called an "overture". Mr Castro had said he was ready for discussions covering human rights, political prisoners and press freedom. The US passed a law this week easing restrictions on Cuban Americans.

The move will allow Cuban Americans to visit relatives in Cuba and send money home more easily.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the UN needs to take a strong position in response to North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket

"It's a provocative act that has grave implications," Mrs Clinton told reporters.

"North Korea ignored its international obligations, rejected the unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations."

Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, had an informal meeting with the Iranian delegate, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, later described the exchange as "unplanned but cordial", adding that they had agreed to "stay in touch".

Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, said Iranian offers of help could mark a new "spring in the relationship" between the west and Iran.He was responding to Akhundzadeh's public pledge at the conference of Iranian co-operation in counter-narcotics and development efforts in Afghanistan.

"I did think the Iranian intervention this morning was promising. The issue of counter-narcotics is a worry that we share. We will look for ways to co-operate with them on that," Clinton said. "This is a promising sign that there will be future co-operation."

Cuba notified the Obama administration it was ready to resume talks on migration issues and to negotiate direct postal service between the countries for the first time in decades. It also agreed to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, drug interdiction and hurricane relief efforts.

The decisions, conveyed to the State Department on Saturday in diplomatic notes, represent another step in the gradual unlocking of relations under the Obama administration, after nearly 50 years of a trade embargo that many in the hemisphere say has outlived its usefulness.“Greater connections,” Mrs. Clinton said, “can lead to a better, freer future for the Cuban people. These talks are in the interest of the United States, and they are also in the interest of the Cuban people.”

Mrs. Clinton is in El Salvador for the presidential inauguration on Monday of the leftist leader Mauricio Funes. As one of his first acts, Mr. Funes has said he will restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, leaving the United States as the only country in the Americas without such ties.

Iran test-fired a sophisticated missile on Wednesday that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe

he solid-fuel Sejil-2 missile used a technology that Iran appeared to have tested at least once before, but the Obama administration nonetheless described the event as “significant,” largely because missiles of its kind can be relatively easily moved or hidden.

The Pentagon confirmed that the test of the missile had been a success

North Korea's threat to "weaponise" its plutonium stocks is "provocative" and "deeply regrettable", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.

The North said it would start enriching uranium and use the plutonium for nuclear weapons hours after a UN vote for tough new sanctions against it.

The US would vigorously enforce the new sanctions, Mrs Clinton said.

Taliban fighters spilling out of the Swat Valley have swept across Buner, a district 60 miles from Islamabad, as Hillary Clinton warned the situation in Pakistan now poses a "mortal threat" to the security of the world.

The US secretary of state told Congress yesterday that Pakistan faced an "existential" threat from Islamist militants. "I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists," she said. Any further deterioration in the situation "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world", she said.

In Buner, Taliban fighters occupied government buildings, ransacked the offices of aid agencies and ordered aid employees to leave. Fighters brandishing guns and rocket launchers patrolled villages, forcing beleaguered local police to retreat to their stations. Local courts have stopped functioning and judicial officials have gone on indefinite leave.

Nato has agreed to resume high-level contacts with Russia, working with what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a "greater unity of purpose".

Russia welcomed the move, six months after Nato froze contacts over the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Mrs Clinton stressed Afghanistan, which she called "Nato's biggest military challenge", was a mutual concern. She has raised the idea of a conference on the issue, with the participation of "all stakeholders", including Iran.

"We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan," said Mrs Clinton.

The Obama administration moved today to resume high-level relations with Moscow when Hillary Clinton led a western push to revive contacts between Russia and Nato.Making her European debut as secretary of state, Clinton told a meeting of Nato foreign ministers that Washington wanted "a fresh start" in relations with Moscow.

"I don't think you punish Russia by stopping conversation with them," she said, adding that there could be benefits to the better relationship. "We not only can but must co-operate with Russia."

The meeting in Brussels agreed to reinstate the work of the Nato-Russia council, a consultative body that was frozen last year in protest at Moscow's invasion and partition of Georgia.

Israel, whose founding idea was branded as racism by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 and which faced an Arab boycott for decades, is no stranger to isolation. But in the weeks since its Gaza war, and as it prepares to inaugurate a hawkish right-wing government, it is facing its worst diplomatic crisis in two decades.

The issue has not gone unnoticed here, but it has generated two distinct and somewhat contradictory reactions. On one hand, there is real concern. Global opinion surveys are being closely examined and the Foreign Ministry has been granted an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through cultural and information diplomacy.

But there is also a growing sense that outsiders do not understand Israel’s predicament, so criticism is dismissed.“People here feel that no matter what you do you are going to be blamed for all the problems in the Middle East,” said Eytan Gilboa, a professor of politics and international communication at Bar Ilan University. “Even suicide bombings by Palestinians are seen as our fault for not establishing a Palestinian state.”