Hillary Must Make Choices Quickly (Independent, UK)

The State Department, Hillary Clinton declared at her Senate confirmation hearing this week, would be "firing on all cylinders" the moment she takes over as the country's top diplomat. It will need to be. Rarely has a new administration come to office with a more daunting foreign policy in-tray.

On issues ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Iran to Darfur, from the tortuous nuclear negotiations with North Korea to policy towards an evermore assertive and nationalist Russia, the incoming Obama team must quickly make important choices – at a moment when its top priority is, inevitably, the domestic economic crisis.

But a key test of the new administration's intentions will come virtually on Day One, with its response to the bloody fighting in Gaza that has made a Middle East settlement even more remote. Both Barack Obama himself and Mrs Clinton have thus far kept their cards close to their chest, insisting that George W Bush alone is in charge of the United States' foreign policy until noon on 20 January.

But some signs have emerged that the US will take a more sympathetic line to the Palestinians. In her confirmation hearings, Mrs Clinton stressed the "tragic humanitarian costs" borne by Gaza's population, and indicated that the Obama administration, unlike its predecessor, would be vigorously involved in Middle East peacemaking from the start.

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