Clinton responds on Kazakh issue

Clinton responds on Kazakh issue

Posted: Sunday, February 03, 2008 10:41 AM by Chuck Todd
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones

ST. LOUIS, MO, Feb. 3 -- In an interview this morning on Fox, Hillary Clinton sought to "set the record straight" -- in her words -- about a New York Times report that linked her husband to a Canandian financier.

The paper reported last week that Bill Clinton helped Frank Giustra close a lucrative uranium mining deal while on a philanthropic trip to the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and that Giustra later donated $31 million to the former president's foundation and pledged to donate even more.

When asked whether as president she would tell her husband to "knock off those kinds of dealings", the New York senator said the description of what had occured was inaccurate.

"He went to Kazakhstan to sign an agreement with the government to provide low cost drugs for HIV/AIDS, a growing problem in Central Asia. While he was there he met with opposition leaders and certainly spoke out about the hopes that we have to have a good relationship with that country," Clinton said.

The senator said she had been on record for many years as against the country's anti-Democratic government and had called for changes.

"So I think that it's clear that I will stand on my own two feet. I will say what I believe and I will be a president who pursues policies that I believe will be in the best interest of our country," she said.

In an odd response to a follow-up question about her husband praising the Kazakh leader, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, who has led the country for 19 years, and suggesting he could lead an international election-monitoring organization, despite her coming out against his anti-Democratic government, Clinton noted that Dick Cheney had also gone to the country to praise its regime.

She went on to explain that she believed in using carrots and sticks in diplomacy and said these difficult issues required "seasoned leadership", especially in dealing with a region where the United States has many interests, from natural resources to fighting extremism.

WALLACE: Let me ask you about another aspect of your husband's role. There was a front page story this week in the New York Times reporting that in 2005, your husband flew to Kazakhstan with a Canadian businessman, and he helped the businessman, according to the report, get a huge uranium deal by praising the dictator, Nazarbayev, who runs the country there, and then a few months later, that businessman, the Canadian businessman, made a $31 million donation to the Clinton Foundation.

Now, whether it was a quid pro quo or not, are you going to tell your husband if you become president to cool it, to knock off those kinds of dealings?

CLINTON: Well, Chris, that is a very one-sided and inaccurate description of what actually occurred.

WALLACE: Well, it's basically what the New York Times said.

CLINTON: Well, let me set the record straight. He went to Kazakhstan to sign an agreement with the government to provide low- cost drugs for HIV/AIDS, a growing problem in central Asia.

While he was there, he met with opposition leaders and certainly spoke out about, you know, the hopes that we have to have a good relationship with that country.

I have been on record for many years against the anti-democratic regime, calling for changes, standing against efforts that would bring them into positions of leadership in the global community without their making changes.

So I think it is clear that I will stand on my own two feet. I will say what I believe. And I will be a president who pursues policies that I think are in the best interests of our country.

WALLACE: Well, if I may just briefly follow up, that's exactly the case. You had spoken out against Nazarbayev's policies, but President Clinton, former President Clinton, attended a dinner at which he, in fact, said he thought that Nazarbayev could lead an organization involved with regulating democracy around the world.

And the question is raised if you're president and he's the former president, and he's conducting and making statements that are out of step with your policy, isn't it going to be awfully confusing?

CLINTON: Well, Dick Cheney also went to Kazakhstan and praised the current regime. You know, you sometimes have to use both carrots and sticks to move these regimes to do what they should be doing.

But I don't think there's any doubt about where I stand and what I intend to do. Obviously, these are difficult problems that require seasoned leadership.

We have a lot of interests in that part of the world with natural resources and trying to make sure there's a bulwark against spreading extremism.

So it is important that you walk the line to try to be very firm about our support for democracy, to do everything possible to change these regimes, but recognize that these are not, you know, often easy calls, because the last thing we want is to see instability, perhaps the rise of an extremist regime, alliances with bad actors.

So you know, I think that it's something that I understand and I'll be able to navigate through as president.