US to withhold some Clinton emails with top secret information

WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department conceded for the first time on Friday that intelligence officials were correct to say that at least 22 emails sent through Hillary Clinton's private server contain some of the government's most sensitive secrets.

The seven email chains from Clinton's time as secretary of state, amounting to 22 separate messages, will be withheld from the public as a result because the information in them is classified at the highest level as "top secret," State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

The announcement came three days before the Iowa caucuses, when the first votes are cast for the presidential nominations and where Clinton is locked in a tight race with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to become the Democratic nominee for the November election.

"These documents were not marked classified at the time that they were sent," Kirby said. He added that the department was now investigating whether the information in them was classified at the time it passed through her private clintonemail.com email account run on a server in her New York home.

The department and intelligence officials have been arguing about the emails, which are being made public under a federal court order, for at least five months. The State Department initially maintained that Clinton might have obtained the same information independently through non-classified channels.

The decision to no longer pursue this argument will add to the questions Clinton has faced for months over her handling of sensitive government information as she seeks to maintain her position as the favorite to become the Democratic nominee.

The Clinton campaign criticized the State Department's decision as the result of "bureaucratic infighting" and "over-classification run amok," adding that the emails should be released.

Some information has been censored in more than 1,300 emails already made public because the State Department says it is classified, including the privately shared thoughts of foreign leaders and government officials. But this is the first time that entire chains are being withheld.

Congressional Republicans have criticized and investigated Clinton for her use of a private email server for her work as a secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Some of her Republican rivals for the presidency, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, have called for her prosecution.

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee's chairman, said in a statement that Clinton had "put our national security and diplomatic efforts at risk."

The government forbids handling of classified information, which may or may not be marked that way, outside secure government-controlled channels, and sometimes prosecutes people who remove it from such channels. The government classifies information as top secret if it deems a leak could cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security.

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee's leading Democrat, defended Clinton in a statement, saying classification determinations are "often very complex" and she was "responding to world events in real time without the benefit of months of analysis after the fact."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken Clinton's server and other computer equipment, but has declined to share details of its inquiries.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest downplayed questions about whether Clinton might be prosecuted by the Justice Department. "That's not something I'm worried about," he told reporters.

Clinton initially said she never sent or received classified information through her email. In recent weeks she has more often said none of her emails were marked that way.

Following a court-ordered schedule, the State Department has already released most of the roughly 30,000 work emails Clinton returned to the department.

The department had been ordered to release all the emails by Friday, but last week asked the court for a one-month extension.

The State Department also said it would agree with a request from the White House that Clinton's emails with President Barack Obama, 18 in all, be withheld from public release for several years under the Presidential Records Act.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech, Lisa Shumaker and David Gregorio)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Kerry says Paris climate deal will not be legally binding: report

LONDON, United Kingdom - A crunch climate summit in Paris will not deliver a legally binding treaty requiring countries to cut carbon emissions, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

"It's definitively not going to be a treaty... They're not going to be legally binding reduction targets like Kyoto or something," Kerry said, according to the newspaper, referring to the 1997 Kyoto protocol committing states to limit emissions.

The UN Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting of some 100 heads of state and government in December aims to secure a deal to stave off catastrophic levels of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The nations most at risk have appealed for the a stricter goal than limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius -- which the vulnerable nations say will still leave one billion people at risk of rising sea levels and other dire impacts.

An effective deal may rely on the world's biggest polluters such as China and the United States signing up to the pledge.

But a global poll last week found that residents of China and the US were among the least concerned about climate change, in contrast to a global consensus that it is a pressing problem, and US President Barack Obama faces opposition from a hostile Senate in pushing through efforts to combat it.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

U.S. says agrees with China on peaceful N. Korea solution

BEIJING - The United States said on Saturday that China had agreed to help rid North Korea of its nuclear capability by peaceful means, but Beijing made no specific commitment in public to pressure its long-time ally to change its ways.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met China's top leaders in a bid to persuade them to push reclusive North Korea, whose main diplomatic supporter is Beijing, to scale back its belligerence and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Visiting Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry has made no secret of his desire to see China take a more active stance towards North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.

Kerry and China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said both countries supported the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

"We are able, the United States and China, to underscore our joint commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner," Kerry told reporters, sitting next to Yang at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.

But North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it described on Friday as its "treasured" guarantor of security.

Yang said China's stance on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula was clear and consistent, repeating phrasing used by the Foreign Ministry since the crisis began.

"We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. To properly address the Korea nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties. It is also the shared responsibility of all parties," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

"China will work with other relevant parties, including the United States, to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks and balanced implementation of the goals set out in the Sept. 19 joint statement of 2005."

The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment programme that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based programme.

Six-party aid-for-disarmament talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, collapsed in 2008 when the North walked away from the deal.

Kerry declined to comment on what specifically China may do to push for a peaceful solution on North Korea, saying only that they had discussed all possibilities.

At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signalled the U.S. preference for diplomacy, but stressed North Korea must take "meaningful" steps on denuclearization.

"We don't want to get into a threat for threat or ... some kind of confrontational language here. There's been enough of that," Kerry said in Beijing.

If North Korea got rid of its nuclear capabilities, then the United States would have no reason to maintain recently deployed defensive capabilities - such as a missile defence system sent to Guam - he said.

"Now, obviously, if the threat disappears, i.e. North Korea denuclearizes, the same imperative does not exist at that point in time for us to have to have that kind of robust, forward leaning posture of defence."

The Pentagon has in recent weeks responded to the North Korean threats by announcing plans to position two Aegis guided-missile destroyers in the western Pacific and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defence system to Guam.

'CONSTRUCTIVE' TALKS

As the North's main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China had a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in Seoul before leaving for Beijing.

China, which sided with North Korea in the 1950-53 civil war against the U.S.-backed South, has always been reluctant to apply pressure on Pyongyang, fearing instability if the North were to implode and send floods of refugees into China.

It has also looked askance at U.S. military drills in South Korea.

China's Xinhua news agency said in a commentary that Washington had itself been "fanning the flames" on the Korean peninsula with its shows of force.

"It keeps sending more fighters, bombers and missile-defence ships to the waters of East Asia and carrying out massive military drills with Asian allies in a dramatic display of preemptive power," it said.

Chinese state television quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling Kerry that rising tensions on the Korean peninsula were in nobody's interests, in apparent reference to both Washington and Pyongyang to dial down the war of words.

"All sides must bear responsibility for maintaining regional peace and stability and be responsible for the consequences," the television report paraphrased Li as saying.

"Disturbances and provocation on the peninsula and regionally will harm the interests of all sides, which is like lifting a rock only to drop it on one's feet."

Still, U.S. officials believe China's rhetoric on North Korea has begun to shift, pointing to a recent speech by China's Xi in which - without referring explicitly to Pyongyang - he said no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain".

Kerry's Asia trip, which includes a stop in Tokyo on Sunday before flying home on Monday, takes place after weeks of shrill North Korean threats of war since the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February.

North Korean television made no mention of Kerry's visit and devoted most of its reports to preparations for celebrations on Monday marking the birth date of state founder Kim Il-Sung.

But Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers' Party's newspaper, issued a fresh denunciation of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, saying: "If the enemies dare provoke (North Korea) while going reckless, it will immediately blow them up with an annihilating strike with the use of powerful nuclear means."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting a government source, said North Korea had not moved any of its mobile missile launchers for the past two days after media reports that as many as five missiles had been moved into place on the country's east coast. It said this suggested no launches were imminent.

(Additional reporting by Terril Yue Jones in BEIJING and Ronald Popeski in SEOUL; Editing by Nick Macfie and Vicki Allen)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Obama mulls new cabinet picks

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama, fresh from re-election and facing a new clash with Congress, got back to work Thursday, with an important item on his to-do list -- stocking his new cabinet.

Obama is expected to lose heavyweights including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for most if not all of his second four-year term.

The president will also likely have to make changes to his White House staff with some senior aides, exhausted by a crisis-strewn four years, expected to move on and others shifting to different jobs in the administration.

Speculation is already rife about who will replace Clinton, who has reiterated that she wants to reclaim a private life put on hold by decades in the spotlight.

Clinton has said she has no interest in another White House race, but the campaign blitz for Obama by her husband former president Bill Clinton, and the power couple's passion for top-level politics, has sparked renewed speculation.

Until Clinton makes her final decision known, the Democratic Party's other possible 2016 presidential candidates will likely hold their fire, as the former first lady would be a prohibitive favorite if she did run.

UN ambassador Susan Rice, who has been close to Obama for years, has long been seen as a likely replacement for Clinton at the State Department, despite being caught up in the furor over the raid in the US consulate in Benghazi.

Another possible contender is John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose stock rose with Obama after he played Republican nominee Mitt Romney in practice runs for the recent presidential debates.

Rice would be the second African American woman in the job after Condoleezza Rice, to whom she is not related. She is known at the United Nations for an assertive manner and is not shy about pounding home the US point of view.

A report in Russia's Kommersant newspaper Thursday said that Moscow, with whom Rice has clashed heatedly over Syria, would prefer to see Kerry get the job, at a sensitive time between Obama and restored President Vladimir Putin.

"It would be more difficult for Moscow to work with Washington" if Rice became Secretary of State, the unnamed Russian official was quoted as saying.

Kerry would have to step down from the Senate, however, and there is concern that his Massachusetts berth could fall prey to Republican Scott Brown, who lost a race with Democrat Elizabeth Warren for the state's other Senate seat.

White House sources said that the usual timetable for replacing cabinet members -- in plenty of time for confirmation by the Senate after the presidential inauguration in January -- could slip this time.

Geithner and Panetta are key figures in the year-end budget and tax showdown looming with Republicans, and may not move on until the so called "fiscal cliff" drama is resolved.

Some insiders talk about White House chief of staff Jacob Lew, himself a budget specialist, as a possible successor for Geithner while others speculate that Obama may reach for someone with business credentials to improve his shaky standing with the corporate world.

Panetta is expected to leave the administration at some point, but he did not serve for the full four-year first term, having taken over just last year from Robert Gates, a holdover from the previous Bush administration.

Also known as a budget specialist, Panetta may stay in place until expected spending reductions are factored in to the Pentagon's budgetary plan to return to his walnut farm in California's Carmel Valley.

The current favorite to succeed him is Michele Flournoy, who served as under secretary of defense for policy early in Obama's first term.

Her appointment may appeal to Obama's sense of history as she would be the first woman to hold the role.

Should Flournoy not get the job, some defense analysts think the current deputy defense secretary Ashton Carter could be in the frame.

There may also be other cabinet departures. It is unclear whether Attorney General Eric Holder, a close associate of Obama who has had a bruising from Republicans, will stay on.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is expected to remain in place to pilot through Congress Obama's reform program, likely a highlight of his second term agenda.

Obama may also have some shuffling to do at the White House, especially if Lew moves to Treasury. The president's political guru David Plouffe is expected to leave and there may be other high profile departures.

It is unclear so far whether White House press secretary Jay Carney will stay. If he leaves, Obama's campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki has been mentioned as a possible replacement.

The president sparked speculation on Tuesday when he said he wanted to sit down with Romney to work out how they could take the country forward.

Obama's first term "Team of Rivals" approach of choosing former political foes such as Clinton, modeled on that of his hero Abraham Lincoln, could apply in Romney's case, perhaps in the Commerce Secretary job.

However, it is unclear whether Romney would be prepared to swallow his pride and work for the man who vanquished him in a bitter White House campaign.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Hillary Clinton preparing to leave State Department

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plans to return to private life haven't changed as President Obama readies for a second term, an official said.

Speaking to reporters during her daily briefing Wednesday, a day after President Barack Obama was re-elected, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked about Clinton's plans.

"I don't think the secretary's plans have changed," the State Department on its website quoted Nuland as saying. "You've heard her say many times that she intends to see through a transition of a successor and then she will go back to private life and enjoy some rest and think and write and all those things."

Asked about new foreign policy initiatives during Obama's second term, Nuland said the elections have only just ended and declined to say anything more.

"Well, I think we need to -- we just had an election last night. There are people who were up a lot of the night counting and enjoying it, so I'm not going to stand here and make any big predictions on the second term. I think we'll let the President take the lead on those things," she said.

Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady, took over as the nation's top diplomat during Obama's first term. In the past, she has expressed her intention to leave the job after her four-year term ends and return to private life.

source: upi.com