General McChrystal Denies Rift With Obama on Afghan War - NYTimes.com

By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The senior American commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday rejected any suggestion that his grim assessment of the war had driven a wedge between the military and the Obama administration, but he warned against taking too long to settle on a final strategy.

The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said in an interview that he welcomed the fierce debate that had emerged this week over how to carry out the war.

“A policy debate is warranted,” General McChrystal said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Kabul.

“We should not have any ambiguities, as a nation or a coalition,” he added. “At the end of the day, we’re putting young people in harm’s way.”

President Obama’s top advisers are rethinking the strategy that Mr. Obama unveiled in March, amid a growing political divide in the United States over how to proceed and confusion among allies that have fighting forces in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal would not address how many additional combat troops he would seek in a request he is preparing to send to the Defense Department. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Wednesday that the commander’s request would be submitted this week, even though no decisions would be made until the administration had finished its newest review of Afghanistan policy.

In his confidential assessment delivered on Aug. 30, General McChrystal warned that he needed more troops within the next year or else the conflict most likely would result in failure.

“I had absolute freedom to put in a candid assessment, and I did that,” he said in the interview, his first since submitting his 66-page classified report. “I have not been limited in any way in identifying resources that might be required.”

General McChrystal said he agreed to speak to The New York Times on Wednesday after he became increasingly concerned about reports of rifts between the military and the civilian leadership, and about rumors he was considering resigning if his assessment was not accepted.

The general denied that he had discussed — or even considered — resigning his command, as had been whispered about at the Pentagon, saying that he was committed to carrying out whatever mission Mr. Obama approved.

“I believe success is achievable,” he said. “I can tell you unequivocally that I have not considered resigning at all.”

The general said that after submitting his report, he had been directed to provide more information and respond to several questions, including on perhaps the thorniest issue: the impact of the flawed Afghan presidential election. Allegations of widespread ballot fraud have raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai as a partner in the counterinsurgency campaign.

“We are doing an assessment almost on a constant basis,” General McChrystal said, speaking of both the twists and turns of the military mission and the political developments in Afghanistan.

He would not address various proposals for reshaping the mission that differ from his, including an approach supported by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back the military operation in Afghanistan to focus instead on terrorists seeking haven in Pakistan.

The commander said that he welcomed alternative proposals for how to stabilize Afghanistan and stressed that he did not feel that his analysis had been diminished in the view of senior administration officials because of its blunt tone.

“This is the right kind of process, and the way I see duty,” he said. “I have been given the opportunity to provide my inputs to the decision. Then it is my duty to execute that decision.”

General McChrystal, who assumed command of the American and NATO operations in Afghanistan in June, said that he had not spoken directly to Mr. Obama since he submitted his assessment, but that he expected he would after the president and his advisers had time to digest it.

Separately, at a conference in Washington, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the Middle East, said that both he and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had endorsed General McChrystal’s broad assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

Asked to evaluate the impact of possible delays on endorsing a new strategy and considering troops requests, General McChrystal said, “Obviously, from a strictly military standpoint, time is always important, but it also is relative in this case.”

The general said he never was told to delay his troop request because of political concerns in Washington.

“My prognosis probably did exactly what it should have done: It got people to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s look at the basic premise,’ ” he said. “To me, there’s no rift. There’s no boxing anybody in.”

Even in advance of any decisions by the Obama administration, General McChrystal said he was taking steps to reshape the war effort in Afghanistan, including changing the way coalition forces develop Afghanistan’s own security forces.

While there are a range of opinions in Congress on whether to send more combat troops, there is broad support for making a priority of building up Afghanistan’s army and police force.

General McChrystal said he had ordered allied forces working with Afghan soldiers and police officers to go beyond organizing, training and equipping local forces; American and NATO units now try to build “a full-time partnership” with local forces, expanding the relationship to include living side by side, combining their planning efforts and going out on operations together.

Survey Shows Pull of the U.S. Is Still Strong Inside Mexico - NYTimes.com

By JULIA PRESTON

In spite of high unemployment in the United States and strict border enforcement, one-third of Mexicans say they would move to this country if they could, and more than half of those would move even if they did not have legal immigration documents, according to a survey published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

The United States still exerts a powerful attraction for Mexicans, the survey found, with 57 percent saying that those who leave home to settle here have better lives, while only 14 percent say life is worse in the United States.

Many Mexicans want to migrate here even though they are well informed about the hardships they could face and are expecting conditions at home to improve. Nearly half of those surveyed said they knew someone who had tried to reach the United States but had returned home after being caught by border authorities. Four in 10 said they knew someone who had returned home unable to find a job here.

Although 78 percent of Mexicans said they were not happy with their nation’s direction, 61 percent said they expected the economy to get better in the coming year.

“For many, many people in Mexico, this is still the land of opportunity,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization in Washington. The poll in Mexico is part of a series of surveys that Pew conducted this year in 24 nations and the Palestinian territories to examine global attitudes.

Personal connections between the two countries are intense. About 4 in 10 Mexicans reported having relatives or friends in the United States they communicated with regularly.

The survey suggests that recent declines in Mexican migration to the United States may be only temporary. A study in July by the Pew Hispanic Center, part of the Pew organization, found a steep decrease in recent years in the flow of Mexican migrants, especially since 2007. Scholars and immigration officials say intensified border controls have combined with the lack of jobs in the United States to discourage Mexicans from attempting an illegal journey. Currently, about 11.5 million Mexicans live in this country, according to Pew; an estimated 7 million of them are illegal immigrants.

The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews from May 26 to June 2 with 1,000 adults in Mexico, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Vietnam Finds Itself Vulnerable if Sea Rises - NYTimes.com

By SETH MYDANS

CAI RANG, Vietnam — For centuries, as monsoon rains, typhoons and wars have swept over them and disappeared into the sunshine, the farmers and fishermen of the Mekong Delta have drawn life from the water and fertile fields where the great river ends its 2,700-mile journey to the sea.

The rhythms of life continue from season to season though, like much of the country, the delta is moving quickly into the future, and industry has begun to pollute the air and water.

But everything here, both the timeless and the new, is at risk now from a threat that could bring deeper and longer-lasting disruptions than the generations of warfare that ended more than 30 years ago.

In a worse-case projection, a Vietnamese government report released last month says that more than one-third of the delta, where 17 million people live and nearly half the country’s rice is grown, could be submerged if sea levels rise by three feet in the decades to come.

In a more modest projection, it calculates that one-fifth of the delta would be flooded, said Tran Thuc, who leads Vietnam’s National Institute for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Sciences and is the chief author of the report.

Storm surges could periodically raise that level, he said, and experts say an intrusion of salt water and industrial pollution could contaminate much of the remaining delta area.

The risks of climate change for Vietnam go far beyond the Mekong Delta, up into the Central Highlands, where rising temperatures could put the coffee crop at risk, and to the Red River Delta in the north, where large areas could be inundated near the capital, Hanoi.

Climate experts consider this nation of an estimated 87 million people to be among the half-dozen most threatened by the weather disruptions and rising sea levels linked to climate change that are predicted in the course of this century.

If the sea level rises by three feet, 11 percent of Vietnam’s population could be displaced, according to a 2007 World Bank working paper.

If it rises by 15 feet, 35 percent of the population and 16 percent of the country’s land area could be affected, the document said.

The government report emphasizes that the predictions represent the threat, based on current models, if no measures are taken in the coming decades, like building dikes.

But the potential disruptions and the tremendous cost of trying to reduce their impact could slow Vietnam’s drive to emerge from its postwar poverty and impede its ambitions to become one of the region’s economic leaders.

Once again, this nation, which has spent much of its history struggling to free itself from foreign domination, finds itself threatened by an overpowering outside force.

“Climate change isn’t caused by a developing country like Vietnam, but it is suffering the consequences,” said Koos Neefjes, a policy adviser on climate change with the United Nations Development Program in Hanoi.

In addition to rising seas in the Mekong Delta, climatologists predict more frequent, severe and southerly typhoons, heavier floods and stronger storm surges that could ultimately drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Climate refugees could swell the population of Ho Chi Minh City, on low-lying land just north of the delta, as war refugees did when it was known as Saigon.

But the city itself is also at risk, says the government study, prepared by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Up to one-fourth of the city’s area would be threatened by rising floodwaters if the sea level rose by three feet.

“Ho Chi Minh City could have a double impact if sea levels rise and living conditions in the delta are not sustainable,” Mr. Thuc, the lead author of the government report, said in an interview.

His report assesses only the climatological risks, he said, and a great deal more work needs to be done to try to determine their social and economic impacts and the probable effect on population displacement.

Because of the uncertainties of climate change and the variables of mitigation measures, it is impossible to rank nations precisely on a scale of risk, Mr. Neefjes said.

However, the 2007 World Bank working paper studied 84 coastal developing countries and found Vietnam to be the most threatened in terms of percentage of population affected, and second only to the Bahamas in terms of percentage of land area affected, if no mitigating measures are taken.

“Among all of the indicators used in this paper, Vietnam ranks among the top five most impacted countries,” the paper says. It did not include some small island nations like the Maldives and Tuvalu that are also threatened with severe inundation.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change listed the Mekong Delta, Bangladesh and the Nile Delta in Egypt as the world’s three “hot spots” for potential migration because of their combination of sea-level rise and existing population.

As a region, Southeast Asia is disproportionately vulnerable, with only 3.3 percent of the world’s land mass but more than 11 percent of its coastline, the Asian Development Bank said in a report it released this year.

But Vietnam has at least recognized the problem and begun to address it, Mr. Neefjes said. “Faster than any developing country, it has actually developed a sensible national program to start responding,” he said.

Those plans include an attempt to integrate environmental concerns into the development plans of ministries and enterprises, modifications that could conflict with their ambitions for growth, he said.

Experts said Vietnam’s primary approach — the hugely expensive construction and reinforcement of thousands of miles of dikes — would bring its own set of problems.

In the delta, they said, the barriers will probably inhibit the self-cleansing mechanism of rivers and trap millions of cubic yards of industrial waste, hundreds of thousands of tons of industrial rubbish, and millions of tons of pesticides and fertilizer that are used in fish farms and shrimp farms.

“If one-third of the delta’s area is flooded by seawater, losses would be huge,” Vo Hung Dung, director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Can Tho city branch, said last month in the newspaper Tuoi Tre. “But if the entire delta is polluted by wastewater, the losses could be many times higher.”

Here on the tiny Hau River, which winds through shaded groves of palm, bamboo and mangrove just south of Can Tho in the heart of the delta, there seems to be little awareness of these concerns.

Nguyen Thanh Chanh, 29, who fishes with his wife in a small boat, said that he sometimes listened to the radio and sometimes drank with friends at the end of the day, but that he had never heard any talk of climate change.

Life is already hard, and the rivers already flood during the monsoon season from June to November, from the swollen currents of the Mekong, from heavy rains and from tidal flooding.

An estimated 85 percent of the people in the delta are supported by agriculture.

“Those who farm go to the fields, and those who fish go to the rivers,” said Huynh Thuy, 47, a farmer. “They don’t worry much about the future.”

Qaddafi’s First U.N. Speech Is a Rambling Diatribe - NYTimes.com

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — The blaring cavalcade of world leaders whisking through the streets of New York has been a fall rite for 64 years, with one leader often thrusting himself above the din — a role played this year almost inevitably by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, making his first appearance despite 40 years in power.

After being introduced in the General Assembly Hall as the “leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa,” Colonel Qaddafi shattered protocol by giving a rambling speech that stretched for 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15.

Others went over the time, too, of course. But in the case of President Obama, also making his debut speech but forced to share the limelight, he was forgiven his 38 minutes because he made such a ringing endorsement of the American commitment to the world body. “We have re-engaged the United Nations,” he said to cheers.

Outside the building other rituals unfolded with gusto. Hundreds of protesters turned up to denounce the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who used the podium on Wednesday evening to defend his election in June. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France went jogging in Central Park. Security measures turned Midtown Manhattan into a clogged obstacle course, with agents muttering in their sleeves seeming to outnumber pedestrians.

Colonel Qaddafi — dressed in a brown traditional Libyan robe, embroidered vest and shirt, with a black pin of the African continent pinned to his chest — took about 17 minutes to get to the main point of his speech, which was a demand for an African seat on the Security Council.

He also suggested that those who caused “mass murder” in Iraq be tried; defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate; wondered whether swine flu was cooked up in a laboratory as a weapon; and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

He offered to move the United Nations headquarters to Libya because leaders coming here had to endure jet lag and because the understandable security against another attack on New York by Al Qaeda was too stringent. And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

The Security Council “is political feudalism for those who have a permanent seat,” Colonel Qaddafi said, speaking in Arabic and riffling through various documents on the hall’s green marble podium.

“It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the terror council,” he added. “Permanent is something for God only. We are not fools to give the power of veto to great powers so they can use us and treat us as second-class citizens.”

Although a red warning light illuminates after the 15-minute time limit, United Nations officials said they could not remember anyone interrupting a head of state to explain that the allotted time had expired.

Colonel Qaddafi also attracted attention far from the General Assembly Hall. His official home in New York was the mission on East 48th Street; Libyan diplomats briefly seemed to find a place for his controversial reception tent on a Westchester estate owned by Donald Trump in Bedford, N.Y., but he apparently had no plans to go there. At the mission, he welcomed Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, while some supporters outside sang his praises.

Inside the United Nations, reactions to his speech were mixed. Some world leaders were cursing him quietly all day because he threw off schedules for side meetings. “They were not happy,” said Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador. “Everybody had to cancel meetings and postpone things and arrive late.” (The normal two-hour lunch break was canceled to squeeze in all the leaders scheduled to speak in the afternoon, although the lunch for world leaders hosted by Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, went ahead a little late.)

At one point in his speech, Colonel Qaddafi waved aloft a copy of the United Nations charter and seemed to tear it, saying he did not recognize the authority of the document. Speaking later in the day from the same podium, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, “I stand here to reaffirm the United Nations charter, not to tear it up.”

Michele Montas, the United Nations spokeswoman, called the denigration of the charter “unacceptable.”

Arab ambassadors accustomed to tongue-lashings from the “brother leader” laughed off the speech as vintage Qaddafi, and at least one United Nations official expressed relief that he did not talk longer. The last General Assembly address of such length likely took place in 1960, when President Fidel Castro of Cuba delivered a similarly verbose speech with a parallel theme — that all weak states were likely to face aggression from the American superpower.

“I don’t think anybody has ever done a real study of General Assembly speeches because nobody listens to them,” said Stephen Schlesinger, a historian of the body. He noted that it was only the controversial leaders who really attract attention. “It seemed like pent-up fury. It seemed like he had been smoldering over all these issues for years and wanted to get it all out.”

Many seats in the grand hall were empty, as they often remain during the speeches because leaders prefer to chat in the hallways or simply escape the grandstanding on stage.

When a leader finishes speaking, there is a tradition of other heads of state going to shake his or her hand if they so desire. So many leaders leapt up to greet Mr. Obama that it took some 20 minutes to settle the hall back down, with the new assembly president, Ali Treiki, also a Libyan, pounding the gavel and saying, “Please take your seats,” over and over, in Arabic, English and French.

Aside from the tradition of Brazil speaking first and the host country, the United States, second, slots are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. Colonel Qaddafi, who immediately followed Mr. Obama and whose speech contained no shortage of barbs against the United States without naming it directly, also heaped praise on the idea that the United States had elected a “son of Africa” as president.

In fact he suggested that Mr. Obama remain American president for a long time, not unlike his extended reign in Libya. (Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book suggests that in a perfect state, the government disappears and the people rule, but Libyans note wryly that the colonel has never seemed to follow his own advice.)

Diane Cardwell and Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

Novice Authors Must Promote Themselves, Since Publishers Won't - washingtonpost.com

With Promotion Money Tight, Authors Take to Online Sites To Toot Their Own Horns

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Poor Kelly Corrigan, first-time author, didn't get invited to this weekend's National Book Festival on the Mall to plug her 2008 memoir, "The Middle Place." She won't be rubbing shoulders with heavyweight authors such as Sue Monk Kidd, John Grisham or Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz. No major newspaper bothered to review the California mom's tale about cancer and family and recovery when it was released. Her publisher didn't send her on tour. All the old-school staples of book promotion -- the book festival, the tour, the glowing newspaper review -- Corrigan got none of them.

What was a newbie author to do?

She cobbled together a trailer for her book on her home computer, using iMovie software, downloading a free tune off the Web for background music, and stuck it on her Web site. Her agent helped get her on one network television morning show. About 20 friends hosted book parties, which she hit on a self-funded three-week blitz, selling books out of the trunk of her car. A guy shot video of her reading an essay at one of these parties, and she posted it on YouTube when the paperback came out.

A year later, the book has sold about 80,000 copies in hardcover and another 260,000 in paperback, according to Nielsen BookScan data. It sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 20 weeks, peaking at No. 2. That homemade trailer has been viewed more than 100,000 times. The video of her reading has drawn 4.5 million hits. She's in Washington on Thursday, speaking at the Congressional Families Cancer Prevention Award luncheon. Then she will plow into more than a dozen paid speaking gigs across the country in the next six weeks.

"I hand-sold at least 2,000 to 3,000 copies," the 42-year-old said in an interview this week from her home in Oakland. "And while the hardcover was doing well, everything changed with that video from the reading."

Corrigan, spending $3,700 for the Web site and her tour, figured out a path through the weird new-media maze of authors overseeing their own marketing and promotion, using the Internet and networks of friends to get their little-known works off the ground.

Book publishers actively market and promote authors, of course, particularly the big names, but for thousands of writers it's a figure-it-out-yourself world of creating book trailers, Web sites and blogs, social networking and crashing on friends' couches during a tour you arrange.

"Being an author has become much more of an ongoing relationship with your audience through the Web, rather than just writing a book and disappearing while you write the next one," says Liate Stehlik, publisher of William Morrow and Avon Books. "You have to be out there in the online world, talking and participating."

Authors are expected to behave like mini-entrepreneurs, says Kamy Wicoff, founder and CEO of She Writes, a Web site devoted to helping women writers promote their books. She started the site in June. More than 4,000 writers have joined.

"The landscape has altered so fundamentally and irrevocably that almost no one is immune from finding ways to participate in the promotion of their books," Wicoff says. "Writers with small advances and limited resources are expected to treat their book as a new company, with marketing and promotion and PR."

This trend is driven by the availability and ease of Internet marketing, the expense (and diminishing use) of author tours and the need to keep up with the competition. More than 560,000 books were published in the United States last year, a $25 billion pie of which everyone wants a slice.

"The fragmentation of the market is staggering," says Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book audience research firm in New York. "Authors walk into bookstores and think they're cluttered, and wonder how browsers could find their book in there. The problem is, the Web is giga-cluttered by comparison."

For some established icons such as E.L. Doctorow, John Irving or Toni Morrison, the established round of reviews and readings at major festivals is promotion enough. For pop-culture mainstays like Grisham, Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, fans are primed and waiting for their next efforts.

Many other authors -- the media personalities, the pundits, the politicians, the self-help gurus -- "are actually selling their book long before they sell the book," says Richard Pine, a literary agent for three decades and co-founder of InkWell Management. These people, he says, are establishing who they are and what they have to say and are building an audience years before they actually have a book on the shelves.

This reader familiarity is the biggest factor in sales, according to repeated studies carried out by Hildick-Smith's firm. About 60 percent of respondents in surveys say the decisive factor in their decision to purchase a book is that they are already fans of the author.

But most authors are much more like Corrigan. Or, say, Monica Holloway.

The Los Angeles-based mom got good reviews for her first book, a 2007 memoir called "Driving With Dead People." Her second, "Cowboy and Wills," about her autistic son and his dog, is coming out this month. She's hired a consultant to help with Internet publicity. She's got her own Web site (which she pays for), hired a company to put together a trailer for the book, and commissioned someone to write background music for it. She's worked hard to make sure the red on the Web site matches the red on the book cover, ensuring a professional appearance. She's started blogging on the Web site of her publisher, Simon and Schuster, and is networking to set up book club appearances.

"It's all Internet, Internet, Internet," she says of the promotional process. "It's crazy, you emerge from this place of solitude in writing and then switch into the hot glare of 'market yourself now!' It's very uncomfortable, and you try to get past it with some sort of sophistication."

Book trailers are one of the newest promotional outlets. Everybody's got them, little video commercials for their books, something like movie trailers. Grisham's are 20 seconds; Corrigan's is about two minutes.

John McQueeny, chief operating officer at TurnHere Inc., a media production company based in San Francisco, has seen his company make "hundreds and hundreds" of these videos since it got into the business in 2006. He's hired mostly by publishing companies, he says, but a bargain-basement video for a writer working solo would cost about $2,000.

"We're not shooting talking heads in studios," he says. "We're capturing a story about the author, often on a location relevant to the content of the book. It's a way to convey the meaning of the book in moving images and sound . . . and relative to the cost of a tour, it's extremely inexpensive."

So all these shiny things that go fast are really fun to produce, and some are even fun to watch. But do they move units any better than the old-fashioned author signings in a local bookstore? Do they help a book sell more copies, or merely keep pace with others in the marketplace?

Nobody really knows, a range of publishers and industry watchers say. There is not a clear-cut means of connecting Web site traffic, say, to results in sales, and some experts warn new authors not to go overboard.

"There's so much you can do for free in Web promotion that it's just crazy," says Christopher Jackson, executive editor at Spiegel and Grau. "There's been a lot of money wasted in publishing on slickly produced author Web sites that, in the end, really didn't lead anywhere."

Annik LaFarge, a prominent Web site designer based in New York, works with high-profile authors such as Mitch "Tuesdays With Morrie" Albom to help them stay in touch with their fans.

"I get calls several times a week from writers asking me to help them with their projects, but I encourage a lot of them not to do that much," she says. "Unless you have the time and money to invest in it and do new things with the site and keep filing new content, it may not be worth it. . . . The main problem is the cacophony of the Internet. It's difficult to make any sort of impression at all."

Pine, the literary agent, says his best advice to authors is still "write the best book you possibly can." After that, he says, put your name and face out there, no matter the odds. He names Stephen King as "the king of taking a chance on things digital," and salutes Corrigan's seat-of-the-pants success story.

"If you don't try it, you don't know if it will work," he says. "Her videos could have not worked just as easily as it turned out they did. But she got out there, threw herself in the game and look what happened."

India Weighing Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions - washingtonpost.com

Proposed Legislation Signals Shift, Aims at Bolstering Image

By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 24, 2009

NEW DELHI -- Trying to burnish its international reputation as it prepares for a major climate conference, India is considering adoption of curbs on carbon emissions that it has long resisted.

India had thus far rejected emission cuts, declaring that they would compromise the populous nation's economic growth, even as developed countries criticized its intransigence. But under a proposed national law, India may set limits on greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade, focusing on energy efficiency, new building codes, clean energy and fuel economy standards.

India's leadership hopes that by acting on its own, rather than responding to what are likely to be tough demands from other countries during the December climate conference in Copenhagen, the measures will garner more domestic support.

"We have to take up bold new responsibilities that we have evaded so far," Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said at a recent trade conference. "But if we want durable political consensus, then it has to be rooted in domestic legislation and not in an international agreement."

The cuts would be a national goal; they would be neither an internationally binding commitment nor open to international verification. Still, Ramesh said he hoped that the measures would portray India as a "positive player" in climate talks.

India's emerging economic might and global ambitions are nudging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an Oxford-educated economist, to be more mindful of the nation's image. His aides say he wants India to engage with the world in a way that befits its aspiration to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and have greater say in the running of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

"India does not want to be the global bad boy in international negotiations. We don't want to be blamed as the stumbling block anymore," said Tarun Das, head of the Confederation of Indian Industry, who works closely with the Indian government. "I believe the mandate from the prime minister is 'Deal, don't break,' whether it is international trade or climate change negotiations. He believes that India should not be locked up in the old-world fears any longer. What is there to be afraid of?"

The new resolve was visible last month when the Indian government convened a meeting of key trade officials from 30 countries to restart global talks that broke down in July 2008 over the issues of farm subsidies and import tariffs. Many Western nations blamed India for the collapse of the negotiations, upsetting Singh.

"He did not want India to become the lightning rod for international criticism," said Sanjaya Baru, a former spokesman for the prime minister.

Coal meets about 60 percent of India's power needs, and the country is ranked fifth in the production of greenhouse gas emissions. India, which has more than 1 billion people and a rapidly expanding economy, has argued that its per-capita emissions are a tenth of those in the United States and that the bigger polluters should cut first.

"The prime minister feels the arguments that worked two years ago may not work anymore," said an aide to Singh, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "We will not barter away our national interest, but we can afford to make marginal adjustments."

Singh's new confidence that he will win political support among Indians comes from the majorities his party won in recent elections, freeing his government of its five-year-old dependence on Communist allies who refused international concessions.

India took its first step toward more cooperation on carbon emissions two months ago, at the Major Economies Forum in Italy, when it signed on to a declaration to cap the average global temperature at 2 degrees above preindustrialization levels.

But India also has long said that richer nations must assist poorer ones with the cost of mitigating climate change. Not expecting any financial assistance to be offered at the Copenhagen summit, the New Delhi government is not prepared to have its new efforts at reducing emissions overseen by other countries.

"The goals we set will not be open to international verification, because there does not seem to be any money on the table for us at Copenhagen," said Ajay Mathur, director general of India's Bureau of Energy Efficiency. "But Copenhagen need not fail. We can still go for the low-hanging fruit by agreeing on joint development of new technologies. That builds goodwill between nations."

Spain's Answer to Unemployment: Go Greener - washingtonpost.com

Leader in Renewable Energy Considers Subsidies, Mandates to Build Industry

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 24, 2009

MADRID -- As world leaders converge in Pittsburgh for a major economic summit this week, one of the biggest questions they face is this: How do you begin to replace the millions of jobs destroyed by the Great Recession, now that the worst of the crisis has potentially passed?

Here on the sun-drenched and windy Iberian Peninsula, Spain thinks it has an answer: create new jobs and save the Earth at the same time.

Green jobs have become a mantra for many governments, including that of the United States. But few nations are better positioned -- or motivated -- to fuse the fight against recession and global warming than Spain. The country is already a leader in renewable fuels through $30 billion in public support and has been cited by the Obama administration as a model for the creation of a green economy. Spain generates about 24.5 percent of its electricity through renewable sources, compared with about 7 percent in the United States.

But with unemployment at 18.5 percent, the government here is preparing to take a dramatic next step. Through a combination of new laws and public and private investment, officials estimate that they can generate a million green jobs over the next decade. The plan would increase domestic demand for alternative energy by having the government help pay the bill -- but also by compelling millions of Spaniards to go green, whether they like it or not.

In the long term, the government envisions a new army of engineers and technicians nurturing windmills and solar farms amid the orange orchards and carnation fields of Andalusia and Galicia. In the short term, officials say, the renewable-energy projects and refurbishing of buildings and homes for energy efficiency could redeploy up to 80 percent of the million construction workers here who lost their jobs in 2008.

Spain's ambitious effort is being closely watched by the Obama administration and other governments forming their own green-job plans. The U.S. stimulus bill is dedicating billions in grants and loans to renewable-energy projects, marking a shift away from Washington's more passive approach to green growth, which relied largely on tax incentives.

But the bid for governments to take an ever larger role in creating jobs in the private sector -- which many leaders gathering in Pittsburgh see as their mission -- is also fraught with risks.

Though the Spanish government estimates that the alternative-energy sector generates about 200,000 jobs here, about double the number in 2000, critics contend they have cost taxpayers too much money.

In some instances, the government's good intentions have distorted the energy market.

Take, for example, the recent Spanish solar bubble.

Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy here, the government introduced even more generous inducements in recent years to help develop photovoltaic solar power -- a technology that uses sun-heated cells to generate energy. Lured by the promise of vast new subsidies, energy companies erected the silvery silicone panels in record numbers. As a result, government subsides to the sector jumped from $321 million in 2007 to $1.6 billion in 2008.

When the government moved to curb excess production and scale back subsidies late last year, the solar bubble burst, sending panel prices dropping and sparking the loss of thousands of jobs, at least temporarily.

"What they're talking about now -- creating a new sustainable economic model through alternative energy -- is going to be exactly the opposite of sustainable," said Gabriel Calzada, a Spanish economist and critic of the government's alternative-energy policy. "You're only going to create more distortion, more bubbles. It isn't going to work."

Like Building the Internet

In 2007, only one in 20 working-age residents of advanced economies was without a job. By next year -- when the International Monetary Fund expects global unemployment to peak -- that number will have jumped to one in 10.

The job market is often the last to recover after a recession. But some economists predict a years-long stagnation in job creation and wages in developed countries, including the United States, Britain, Ireland and Spain.

At the same time, governments are trying to hash out a deal by December that would establish new cuts in emissions by 2020 in an effort to stem global warming. One of the most obvious ways for nations to meet their goals, experts say, is through alternative-energy projects.

"This is going to be like the building of the Internet," said Carlos Mulas-Granados, director general of the Ideas Foundation, a Spanish think tank associated with Prime Minister Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party. "We're going to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild the economy with clean, green growth."

The multibillion-dollar investment is a gamble Spain is willing to take because, more than any other nation hit by the crisis, it is desperate for jobs. The unemployment rate here is now one of the highest in the developed world.

The streets of Madrid and other cities are being dug up and repaved in a short-term government effort to offer temporary work to the unemployed. For most, the work will last only a few months.

"And what do we do when the roadwork runs out?" Jos? Luis Salazar Garc?a, 32, said as he installed terra-cotta tiles on a Madrid sidewalk in a government-funded job. "There are no other jobs in Spain."

The country's answer is to go greener.

Spain now exports more windmills and solar panels than wine. An armada of Spanish companies has invested heavily in the United States, with one buying up an old steel mill a few dozen miles from Pittsburgh and turning it into a wind turbine plant.

Though still undergoing final touches before being presented to parliament next month, Spain's new Economic Sustainability Law would effectively create more demand for renewable fuels. All new homes and commercial buildings would require higher levels of energy efficiency, including solar power sources, leaving their owners no choice but to adopt green habits.

Government-backed loans to green companies would allow them to offer generous terms to homeowners and corporations for the installation of solar and other alternative energies.

A Jump in Energy Costs?

A new $300 million thermo-solar plant in the arid mining town of Puertollano, about 100 miles south of Madrid in the Don Quixote country of Castile-La Mancha, offers a glimpse into Spanish hopes. The partnership between the large corporate utility Iberdrola and a national energy agency employed as many 650 workers to build the plant over the past two years. The huge plant was like manna from heaven for a host of companies stung by the recession. A maker of car mirrors retrofitted its assembly lines to produce the plant's massive reflective panels, for example.

But Calzada's recent study -- which has come under fire by green advocates here and abroad -- suggests that the government's cost to create one job in leading alternative-energy sectors has averaged $855,000. It notes that although hundreds may be temporarily employed to build plants, a far smaller number gain permanent positions.

Because alternative-energy plants are more expensive than traditional power plants that burn fossil fuels, the government here has made green generation profitable by promising big subsidies for years to come. Though most Spaniards have so far seen only modest increases in their electricity bills, even government officials are warning that prices might suddenly jump in the coming years as more of the real costs are passed on to consumers.

In the meantime, some power distributors in Spain have converted their government guarantees for higher-than-market energy prices into complex financial instruments, then sold them off to the highest bidders in a manner similar to the repackaging of subprime mortgages in the United States. If the government doesn't make good on those guarantees, critics fear, the securities could suddenly devalue, soaking the investors who hold them.

"There are going to be people who say we're doing this wrong or that wrong," said ?ngel Torres, Spain's secretary general of economic policy. "But the reality is that government needs to help create a critical mass in alternative energy to make it sustainable in the long run, and that's what Spain is doing.

Pittsburgh, Site of G-20 Summit, Is Shaking Off Its Smoky Image - washingtonpost.com

Host of G-20 Summit Has Evolved

By Alexi Mostrous
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

PITTSBURGH -- When President Obama announced that this Rust Belt city would host a meeting of ministers from the world's leading economies, many scoffed. "A lot of people are asking something along the lines of 'What, was downtown Baltimore booked?' " wrote the Atlantic's Derek Thompson.

But Pittsburgh has shaken off its smoky image, transformed by an industrial collapse that drove out half of the city's population in the early 1980s. As the Group of 20 gathers Thursday, members are more likely to ask what Pittsburgh can teach them than why they had to come here.

The city's unemployment rate is well below the national average. Wages and housing prices are stable or up. Nearby Cleveland has experienced rampant foreclosures, but here they are relatively uncommon.

The city's main industries -- health care and education -- are thriving. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, an $8 billion health-care company, employs 50,000 people in western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh's health services business has almost tripled in size since 1979, creating more than 100,000 jobs.

It is quite a turnaround for a city that lost 120,000 jobs between 1981 and 1984, after its steel industry collapsed. Thousands of young residents fled the city to find work, and unemployment reached 17 percent among those who remained. Much as with Detroit today, many wondered whether Pittsburgh could continue to exist.

"But here we are, still a major center and doing well," said Christopher Briem, an urban studies expert at the University of Pittsburgh. "The lesson is that there's life after your defining industry dies."

Diversification has been difficult, but Pittsburgh's economy is now healthier than that of many communities flattened by recession. "Pittsburgh does show that you can't rely on one industry. You have to retrain workers and inject money into new industries through a variety of means," Briem said.

A retraining program in the 1990s steered many workers into service industries. Public-private partnerships injected millions in state money into technology research. Now more than 100 billion-dollar companies have offices here.

Luis Von Ahn moved to Pittsburgh in 2000 after graduating from Duke. Now a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he developed a Web feature called reCAPTCHA, which he sold to Google last week for an undisclosed but substantial amount.

"The fact Google has a presence in Pittsburgh definitely affected my decision to sell to them," he said. "I guess I feel like it's my home now."

In his nine years here, Von Ahn, 30, can appreciate Pittsburgh's physical changes. The waterfront area, once a dumping ground for industrial byproducts, has been given over to parks. Along the Allegheny River, factories that once made cork and steel, strollers and Heinz soup now house upscale apartments.

Even the building where the G-20 meetings are being held is the world's first convention center to be certified "green" by the U.S. Green Building Council.

"When I came here, there were three coffee shops in the whole place," he said. "Now the rivers are cleaner and the restaurants are better. Many of my students, who used to leave for California or New York when they finished their PhDs, are choosing to stay."

Residents today are more likely to spot a Hollywood movie star than a functioning steel mill. Pittsburgh played a role in 12 feature films in 2008, partly the result of a change in the city's tax laws three years ago. A TV program called "Three Rivers," which will debut next month, is also set here.

"We're crazy busy," said Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office. "Russell Crowe is coming to shoot downtown in October. Tony Scott's directing a film starring Denzel Washington. Jake Gyllenhaal's in town."

In the past, Pittsburgh doubled for other cities, but no longer, Keezer said. "We've been New York, Paris, and Washington, D.C.," she said. "But now people are setting their films in Pittsburgh. And every time you see an image of the new Pittsburgh, it helps dispel the smoky, old version."

Like other burgeoning industries here, Pittsburgh's film industry is bolstered by an emphasis on education. In 2001, Carnegie Mellon introduced a popular program focusing on entertainment technology. Point Park University downtown began offering a film studies course, swiftly followed by Alleghany County's community college.

Along with two world-class universities -- Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh -- the city boasts three major-league sports teams, a top-rated symphony and a host of theaters. Six-bedroom houses can be bought for $500,000. The city currently has a budget surplus.

For all that, Pittsburgh still faces some major problems. The city's infrastructure has suffered from decades of underinvestment. Abandoned houses line the streets of some neighborhoods. Notwithstanding those high-priced apartments along the river, poverty abounds: Many children in city schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The population of 310,000 remains less than half what it was before the steel industry faltered, and as Briem notes, it's an aged population: "We're the only major metropolitan area with more deaths than births each year,"

Those demographics have Pittsburgh struggling to fill positions in fast-expanding industries, said Bill Flanagan, head of the Allegheny Conference, an economic development group.

"We still don't have enough restaurants or bars to attract young people," he said. "We've got 30,500 open jobs and we can't fill them."

Flanagan hopes the "boomerang effect" -- where the children of families who left Pittsburgh decades ago come back -- will bolster the workforce.

Carl Kurlander, a screenwriter who grew up in Pittsburgh but moved to Los Angeles in 1982, returned with his wife in 2001 to teach screenwriting at the University of Pittsburgh. "We were going to take a year off -- a Hollywood sabbatical -- and then come back," he said. "But then a weird thing happened. We were happy."

Kurlander has just completed a film about Pittsburgh called "My Tale of Two Cities." "It suddenly felt like I had a life," he said. "Pittsburgh can be slow to change, but it's a great place."

Salvadorans Seek a Voice to Match Their Numbers - washingtonpost.com

Summit Aims to Raise Political Visibility

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

For nearly three decades Salvadoran immigrants have been among the nation's most organized newcomers, founding clubs to raise money for schools back home, establishing medical clinics for new arrivals and battling in Congress and courts to gain legal status for tens of thousands of political dissidents who fled persecution by the U.S.-backed government during El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s.

Yet, even as Salvadoran immigrants and Americans of Salvadoran descent have grown to number 1.6 million -- essentially tying them with Cubans as the nation's third largest Latino group -- they have mostly shied from direct participation in U.S. politics.

About 150 of the community's most prominent leaders from across the country gathered in Washington to change that Wednesday.

"This conference is about stepping it up to another level of visibility, performance and power," said Maryland Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery), a co-organizer of the First Salvadoran American Leadership Summit.

"When we first came to the United States, it was just about survival, so that's what our organizations focused on," Salvadoran-born Gutierrez said. "Now we have a community that has evolved, but I think we're kind of stuck in that service model. . . . We have to either create new political institutions, or we have to expand those current organizations so they also play a political role."

Conference participants plan to lobby more than 80 members of Congress on Thursday in support of efforts to offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Wednesday's meeting included strategy sessions on how to influence the immigration debate and ensuring that Salvadoran Americans are fully counted in the 2010 Census.

But participants stressed that the larger purpose was simply to overcome their geographic dispersal, personality differences and longstanding ideological divisions stemming from El Salvador's civil war to convene as a group for the first time.

"We're not here to look for unity, because unity is a romantic dream that is hard to reach," said Salvador Sanabria of Salvadorans in the World, one of the four largest organizations. "We're here to come to this round table without hierarchy to find a consensus about the actions we can take to help our community."

Among the clearest points of agreement was that Salvadoran Americans should insist that any legalization plan adopted by Congress allow about 200,000 Salvadoran illegal immigrants who were granted temporary legal status in the wake of a 2001 earthquake to be the first in line to become permanent legal residents.

Indeed, several participants pointed to the unusual interests of those Salvadorans as an example of why they need to organize as a separate, national Salvadoran American movement.

"We have a separate identity even as we're part of the larger Latino community," said Jose Artiga of the SHARE foundation, which promotes development in El Salvador.

For all the event's optimism, there are some daunting obstacles to transforming the numerical strength of Salvadoran Americans into political clout. According to an analysis of Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, 47 percent of U.S. residents of Salvadoran descent are not citizens. And 26 percent more are citizens but are still children, leaving only 27 percent who are currently eligible to vote. And it was perhaps telling that much of the discussion at the conference was in Spanish.

Still, many took heart in the political success of Salvadoran Americans in the Washington region. While far more Salvadorans live in California, their influence there is often overshadowed by that state's much larger Mexican American population.

By contrast, its 134,000 Salvadoran immigrants comprise the Washington region's largest foreign-born group. The figure is greater if their U.S.-born children are included.

That might explain why the nation's four highest Salvadoran American elected officials are from Washington. In addition to Gutierrez, they are Arlington County Board Chairman J. Walter Tejada (D), the summit's other co-organizer; Maryland Del. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Prince George's); and Prince George's County Council member William A. Campos (D-Hyattsville), who were also in attendance.

At U.N., Obama to Push for New Nuclear Weapons Treaty - washingtonpost.com

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 24, 2009

President Obama will use the forum of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to press his efforts to slow the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce global stockpiles.

Diplomats have finished negotiating a Security Council resolution that affirms many of the steps Obama plans to pursue as part of his vision for an eventual "world without nuclear weapons." They include a new worldwide treaty halting production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and the strengthening of the global Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has controlled the spread of nuclear weapons for decades but now is in danger of fraying.

The session of the Security Council, whose rotating chair is held this month by the United States, will occur alongside a two-day U.N. conference that will strongly push for a worldwide ban on nuclear tests, officials said. For the first time in a decade, a U.S. delegation will attend the biennial U.N. session on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has been ratified by 181 countries but lacks the support of nine critical governments, including several declared and undeclared nuclear powers. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is leading the delegation, is expected to commit the U.S. government to trying to ratify the treaty, which was defeated in the U.S. Senate in 1999.

Obama's agenda marks a sharp departure from the policies of President George W. Bush, who was generally skeptical of the reliability and value of arms-control treaties. Obama has said the new approach is necessary because rogue states and terrorists are trying to acquire nuclear bombs, and the spread of nuclear technology could set off arms races in volatile regions such as the Middle East.

Jeffrey G. Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the New America Foundation, said the U.N. resolution would represent significant international support for Obama's nonproliferation agenda, which was first outlined in a speech in Prague in April.

"It's great for the president to go and give the speech. It's a heck of a lot more powerful if the other countries with nuclear weapons . . . say, 'Okay, it's also the direction we wish to go,' " Lewis said.

But weeks of haggling over the resolution revealed persistent differences among U.N. members. China and Russia objected to explicit mentions of Iran as a state suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge the country denies, and North Korea, which has developed nuclear weapons in defiance of U.N. sanctions, diplomats said. Instead, the measure refers to them indirectly by citing references to U.N. sanctions against both countries, according to a draft of the text.

And countries belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement have objected to the resolution's insistence that nuclear violators be brought to the attention of the Security Council, diplomats said. Under current practice, countries that ignore their nonproliferation obligations are first referred to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which can then bring the matter before the council. White House officials said the language would give the Security Council more authority to enforce compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Critics say the Obama administration is placing too much hope in treaties that may not win sufficient ratifications for years and may not be fully verifiable.

"They are overselling this, overselling how likely it is to come into force, and how likely it is to be beneficial if it did," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

Administration officials said they hope to secure a unanimous vote on the resolution. U.S. officials were also seeking the possibility of a "presidential resolution," diplomats said, which would be co-sponsored by all 15 members of the Security Council and would be symbolically stronger.

Gaining Senate ratification of the Test Ban Treaty will be critical to Obama's agenda, and diplomats including Ellen O. Tauscher, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, will use the U.N. conference to develop a diplomatic strategy to get other holdouts to soften their opposition, officials said.

"Other countries have said, if we ratify, they'll ratify," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Such promises could make it easier to convince skeptics in the U.S. Senate that voting for the treaty is worthwhile, officials say.

Indonesia has pledged to ratify the treaty if the United States does so, and China could quickly follow suit, according to analysts. Other holdouts include Egypt, Israel, India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.

North Korea conducted a nuclear test this year and is considered unlikely to approve the pact anytime soon. Iran has signed the treaty but has not ratified it.

Supporters of the treaty say that by ratifying it, the United States could help isolate and increase pressure on countries that don't do so.

"We are not going to be able to credibly call on other states to take on additional nonproliferation responsibilities if we don't fulfill what other states consider U.S. disarmament commitments," said Darryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association.

Lynch reported from the United Nations. Staff writer Michael D. Shear at the United Nations contributed to this report.

At United Nations, Obama Makes Appeal for World's Cooperation - washingtonpost.com

U.S. Can't Face International Crises Alone, He Tells U.N. in Effort to Strengthen Ties

By Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 24, 2009

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 23 -- President Obama challenged other nations to match his efforts to change the United States' relationship with the rest of the world on Wednesday, saying in an address to the United Nations that the task of solving global crises "cannot be solely America's endeavor."

Obama's speech came during a whirlwind week of international gatherings and diplomacy -- a climate-change summit and Middle East meetings on Tuesday; the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council on Wednesday and Thursday; and a Group of 20 meeting of world leaders to discuss the international economy on Friday.

The events unexpectedly coincided with a period of intense scrutiny in Washington of the critical choices facing the president in his Afghanistan policy -- and highlighted the constraints on Obama as he seeks a more cooperative relationship with the rest of the world.

From the moment he began speaking, Obama made clear his determination to repair the "skepticism and distrust" he said had built up under his predecessor, George W. Bush. He argued that Bush's tenure had fed a "reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction." The generally warm response Obama received, in contrast to the sometimes stony silence that greeted Bush at the United Nations, suggested that his presidency already is perceived differently.

Hailing what he called a new era in the United States' relationship with other nations, Obama ticked through the changes he said his administration has made. They include the banning of torture; the order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the winding down of the war in Iraq; the renewed focus on dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; the appointment of a special envoy for the Middle East with the goal of a two-state peace agreement; and the fresh investment in combating climate change.

In return, Obama said, the United States expects help from others in addressing these issues. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he said. "We have sought -- in word and deed -- a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

That summed up the challenge he faces. Can a different style, a more open hand and expressions of respect prompt the rest of the world to follow along as his administration tries to solve many of the same problems that confronted the Bush administration? And to what extent will Obama be willing to act, if not exactly unilaterally, then mostly alone, to advance U.S. interests?

Obama's speech, his first to the General Assembly, was an attempt to make good on his campaign pledge to forge a new compact with other nations, while recognizing that old problems -- of war, nuclear proliferation, economic distress and environmental crisis -- still command the nation's close attention.

Eight months into his administration, clear foreign policy success has been elusive. In his speech, the president conceded that attaining peace in the Middle East will be "difficult." He warned that Iran and North Korea must be held accountable for their actions. And he said that the world is doing irreversible damage to the climate.

The audience included several foreign leaders whom the administration is seeking to face down on the diplomatic front, among them Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has rebuffed other countries' calls to stop enriching uranium and has thumbed his nose at criticism of his human rights record, his hostility toward Israel and his support for groups that use terrorist tactics.

Ahmadinejad sat without obvious reaction as Obama chided Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, saying its actions -- and similar efforts by North Korea -- "threaten to take us down this dangerous slope" that makes the world less secure.

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi declared in a speech following Obama's that "Africans are proud that the son of Africa" has been elected to the presidency of the United States. He said he would be "happy and content if Obama can stay forever as president of America."

Gaddafi railed for more than 90 minutes on the "dictatorial" powers of the United States and the Security Council, saying the council's permanent members have established a "feudal" order in which poor countries have been terrorized through economic sanctions and military force. "It should not be called the Security Council," he said. "It should be called the Terror Council."

Regarding the Middle East, Obama said that Palestinians have "legitimate claims and rights" and that the United States' "unwavering commitment" to Israel's security must be coupled with an insistence that Israel recognize them. But he also said the world must urge Palestinians to "recognize Israel's legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security." Both statements were greeted with applause.

On climate change, Obama again declared that a new era has dawned in which the United States will no longer be an obstacle to action. "The days when America dragged its feet on this issue are over," he said, a clear reference to the Bush administration. But he repeated his demand for responsibility on the part of developing countries, which he said could do more to reduce their air pollution without inhibiting their economic growth.

Part of Obama's success on these fronts will be determined as much by the steadiness of his leadership and the respect he is able to command as by his appeals for cooperation. Obama has set clear goals in foreign policy, and in his speech Wednesday, he outlined concrete steps in some of the areas of priority. But as he spoke, his administration was engaged in an important internal debate on Afghanistan -- one that became all the more public Monday with the publication in The Washington Post of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's report warning that the mission there will fail unless more troops are deployed.

It was only a few months ago that the president announced a new strategy for Afghanistan; McChrystal was installed to implement that effort. Now, in the wake of reports that the general wants more troops, administration officials suggest that another strategy may be needed. They cite a new set of conditions, including the messy aftermath of the recent election in Afghanistan, as a cause for reassessment. The election certified rather than exposed what administration officials have long known -- that President Hamid Karzai is an unreliable partner in the battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

When he was running for president, Obama found the war in Afghanistan a convenient policy foil for his opposition to the Iraq conflict, though one to which he seemed genuinely committed. Opposed to the war in Iraq, he was able to demonstrate muscularity on foreign policy by arguing that Iraq was consuming resources better focused on Afghanistan.

Now, some Obama advisers hear echoes of Vietnam in the military's call for more troops and more time before the mission in Afghanistan can be expected to succeed. Meanwhile, outside pressure has built for Obama to listen to the generals and not to waver in his commitment of the forces they say are needed to defeat al-Qaeda. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom Obama defeated for the presidency, is among those ratcheting up the pressure. He is speaking as forcefully now in favor of an escalation as he was when he called for more troops in Iraq, long before Bush initiated the "surge" policy that helped quell the violence there.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, Obama sought to rally the world to act on challenges as diverse as the economy, nuclear proliferation and the environment. But Afghanistan is an example of how the United States must set its own course before other countries will follow. The rest of the world will be watching to see how the president responds.

Balz reported from Washington. Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.