Clinton: Europe ‘essential partner’ of US

THERE is a leadership crisis in the world and the EU and the United States must take the lead, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said yesterday, describing Europe as her country’s “essential partner”.

Her meetings with the EU institutions in Brussels and the UN in Geneva so early in her term signalled a major shift away from the Bush administration policy of dealing bilaterally with countries.

Answering questions from several hundred young people in the European Parliament yesterday, she warned that complex mechanisms in governing and what she referred to as, “process for the sake of process”, was dangerous.