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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

US secretary of state still limited by injury


International News
US secretary of state still limited by injury
Published Date: June 28, 2009

WASHINGTON: One week after surgery to repair a broken right elbow, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had not resumed a full work schedule Friday at the US State Department, officials said. Her spokesman, P J Crowley, told reporters that Clinton, who broke her arm in a fall at the State Department on June 17, was keeping an "aggressive schedule," including meetings at the White House on Thursday and Friday. He also said she was doing "a significant amount" of her work from home, including making o
fficial phone calls.

On Friday she spoke from home by phone with the foreign minister of Argentina, Crowley said, and she met at the State Department with Crown Prince Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain. Clinton had surgery on June 19. Afterward the State Department said doctors told her she was expected to recover without lasting damage to her arm. No timetable for a full recovery has been made public. Clinton has limited her public appearances since the injury. On advice of her doctors, she canceled a pla
nned trip to Trieste, Italy, and to Corfu, Greece, to attend international meetings this week.

Obviously, given the reality of ... her injury and the operation, she is, you know, fast working her way back to, you know, to reintegrate herself into the daily activity of the bureau," Crowley said. "I think we have travel coming up in the near future. So I think she will be visible as we continue on." Late Friday afternoon the State Department released two official photos of Clinton in her meeting with the Bahraini crown prince. They showed her right arm in a cast from about the middle of her upper arm
to near her wrist. She is right-handed.

Meanwhile, the tense post-election climate in Iran and the Middle East peace process topped talks Friday between US diplomacy chief Hillary Clinton and Bahrain's crown prince, the State Department said. But State Department spokesman PJ Crowley did not indicate whether Clinton had formally requested that Bahrain normalize its relations with Israel as part of a bid for comprehensive peace between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors to boost stalled Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. "You have to, you kno
w, have the right conditions that lead to a negotiation, and we are probing all sides in this," Crowley told reporters. Clinton's conversation with Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, he said, is "certainly" a part of such efforts by Obama's administration.

I think that we have a recognition that the Israelis, the Palestinians-all parties in this process-have a significant role to play," said Crowley. The Obama administration announced earlier this week it was sending an ambassador to Damascus after a four-year absence "because we recognize that there are a variety of countries here that will have roles to play," Crowley said. "And we want to make sure that we have the right conditions in the region so that this negotiation can be restarted." Sheikh Salman a
nd Clinton also discussed Iraq, among a "variety of regional issues," the spokesman said.- Agencies

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Source: http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTA2MDI0MDYzNA==
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