Deal on U.S. healthcare overhaul still uncertain

By Donna Smith
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama`s drive to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system may be back on track thanks to Senate efforts to cut the price tag to $1 trillion, but a bipartisan deal on the sweeping proposal still is far from certain.
Obama wants changes that rein in the escalating costs of healthcare in the United States and bring insurance to most of the 46 million Americans who currently lack it.
He also wants a bill that the Democrats who control Congress and the Republican minority can support to give a bipartisan stamp of approval to his top legislative priority.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was upbeat last week after announcing that panel members had found ways to bring the price tag to about $1 trillion over 10 years, down from an earlier estimate of a staggering $1.6 trillion.
The new estimates helped move lawmakers closer to an agreement, Baucus said. But he was unable to close the deal with Republicans before senators left for a weeklong July 4 Independence Day holiday recess.
Instead, the core group of negotiators -- three Democrats and four Republicans -- issued a tepid statement on Thursday merely affirming their commitment to continue negotiations.
"As we have been for the last several weeks, we are committed to continuing our work toward a bipartisan bill that will lower costs and ensure quality, affordable care for every American," said the group, which includes Baucus and Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the panel.
Soaring healthcare costs undermine the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, strain state and federal budgets and drive many Americans into bankruptcy.
The United States has the world`s most expensive healthcare system. Americans get coverage either through private insurance provided by employers or bought by individuals, or through government-run programs for the elderly, poor and others.
But millions remain uninsured and the United States lags many other industrialized nations in important health measures such as life expectancy and infant mortality.
"VERY DELICATE PROCESS"
The Finance Committee is one of five in the Senate and House of Representatives working on healthcare legislation, and may represent the best chance of obtaining a bipartisan bill.
"It is a very delicate process that Senator Baucus is trying to engineer," said Ron Pollack, executive director of the influential Families USA advocacy group.
A deal that includes Grassley would go a long way toward bringing other Republicans on board, he said.
But any compromises could end up alienating Democrats.  Continued...
Original article

Obama, Merkel show united front at U.S. meeting

By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel displayed a united front on Friday over Iran, climate and regulation, smoothing over -- at least in public -- differences that dogged their relationship.
Obama, who called Merkel a friend he could trust, said the two spoke with one voice in condemning the crackdown on demonstrators in Iran after its disputed election.
Merkel, who has criticized Obama`s economic stimulus plan, praised U.S. efforts to fight global warming and said a bill in the U.S. Congress would advance international talks on climate change later this year.
"The chancellor and I discussed the tragic situation in Iran," Obama said at the opening of a joint news conference.
"Today we speak with one voice. The rights of the Iranian people to assemble, to speak freely, to have their voices heard -- those are universal aspirations."
The two leaders also discussed accelerating the Middle East peace process, fighting extremism in Afghanistan, and creating a "more substantive" relationship with Russia, Obama said.
Merkel and Obama, who will attend the Group of Eight summit of wealthy nations in Italy next month, have clashed over the best way to lift the globe out of recession.
Democrat Obama presided over a $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus package shortly after taking office in January, while Merkel, a conservative, has spoken against massive spending to fix the world`s economic ills.
"I underscored our commitment to strengthening financial regulations, and I welcome Chancellor Merkel`s commitment to reform," Obama said in a nod to their respective priorities.
On climate change, Merkel was expected to press Obama to back a European Union goal of limiting increases in global average temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
But the chancellor, whose visit coincided with a vote in the House of Representatives on a bill capping carbon emissions, went out of her way to praise the U.S. legislation, which Obama supports, and its potential to boost U.N. negotiations in Denmark in December.
"It should not be underestimated what sort of opportunity this brings to us to come to a good, a sustainable result during the Copenhagen conference," she said.
BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP
Other areas of disagreement came up. Merkel`s government has resisted U.S. requests that it accept inmates from the Guantanamo prison that Obama plans to close by early 2010.
Obama said the two sides were discussing the issue.  Continued...
Original article

U.S. senators closer to $1 trillion healthcare bill

By Donna Smith
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators on Thursday moved closer to agreement on a $1 trillion U.S. healthcare overhaul that would extend medical coverage to nearly everyone and without adding to huge budget deficits.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and other panel members said that reducing the cost was a significant step toward getting a final package that could gain at least some Republican support.
Baucus said panel members have narrowed talks to options that bring the price tag to about $1 trillion over 10 years, down from an earlier estimate of $1.6 trillion.
"We have options that would enable us to write a $1 trillion bill, fully paid for," Baucus told reporters after a closed-door meeting with panel members.
"We`re getting a lot closer to an agreement," Baucus said.
Later the group of Senate Finance Republican and Democratic negotiators issued a statement affirming their commitment to reach bipartisan agreement on a bill "that will lower costs and ensure quality, affordable care for every American."
But cracks have emerged in the diverse coalition pushing for an overhaul of a healthcare system that chews up 16 percent of the gross domestic product annually but trails many developed countries on measures like infant mortality and longevity.
Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, a major player in the negotiations, said it was too early to say how many Republicans would back the overhaul.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, also a key negotiator, has strongly opposed Democratic demands that a new government plan be created to compete with private insurance companies to cover the uninsured.
Insurers and doctors share Republican concerns that a public insurance program would drive insurance companies out of business.
"I`m certainly keeping an open mind but I am not very enthusiastic about anything that smacks of a government plan," Hatch told reporters.
`VERY SUBSTANTIAL PROGRESS`
President Barack Obama has made a healthcare plan that reins in costs and covers most of the 47 million uninsured Americans one of his top legislative priorities. He has turned up the pressure on Congress to pass healthcare reform this year and has indicated a willingness to compromise.
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad said lawmakers would pick through the menu of options to develop a package that can earn enough votes to pass the committee and the Senate.
"Very substantial progress has been made over the last 24 hours," Conrad told reporters.  Continued...
Original article

Climate change bill gaining in U.S. House: Pelosi

By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to cut carbon dioxide pollution blamed for global warming is gaining support in the U.S. House of Representatives, where a vote is possible this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.
"We are making progress," Pelosi told reporters when asked whether previously undecided Democrats were beginning to line up behind the climate change bill. "We intend to bring it up" this week, she added.
President Barack Obama, hoping to prod wavering House Democrats, urged passage of the bill, saying it would create millions of jobs and "open the door to a new energy economy."
Obama and Lisa Jackson, who heads the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have pushed hard this week for quick passage of the measure.
House Democratic leaders have said they hope to schedule the vote on Friday on the "cap and trade" bill that would reduce carbon emissions from utilities, manufacturers and others by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.
The legislation, which would encourage the development of cleaner energy alternatives, also would establish a free-market trading system allowing companies to buy and sell carbon pollution permits.
Just one day before a possible House vote, Pelosi and fellow Democratic leaders were working to secure enough support for passage.
Asked whether the controversial bill would pass, Pelosi said, "You never know until you take the vote." Most House Republicans are expected to vote against the bill, arguing it will raise energy prices and encourage more job transfers to foreign soil as companies try to skirt the requirements.
Democratic leaders may have been heartened by a new Washington Post/ABC poll that said three-quarters of Americans want the U.S. government to regulate climate-warming greenhouse gases, while a slim majority -- 52 percent -- support a cap and trade system. That is slightly less support for cap and trade than a similar poll taken nearly a year ago.
The poll was conducted June 18-21 with a 3 percent margin of error.
COUNTING CLIMATE VOTES
Supporters also were heartened by negotiations this week that included new protections for farmers, a deal likely to bring some additional rural lawmakers on board.
Pelosi called on former Vice President Al Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on global warming, to telephone undecided lawmakers and seek their support.
House Republican leader John Boehner told reporters, "I don`t think they have the votes yet." Boehner called the legislation "a job-killing energy tax."
If Pelosi decides there are not enough votes to pass the bill, she likely will wait until next month, following a weeklong July 4th recess, to try to pass the bill.  Continued...
Original article

U.S. calls for new approach in Doha trade talks

By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States called on Thursday for a new approach to concluding the long-running Doha round to free up world trade. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said Washington wanted to negotiate directly with key trading partners in the World Trade Organization talks as the traditional multilateral approach was not working. Major emerging countries said they would reject calls for bilateral concessions.
"We believe we have to start with an honest assessment that continuing on the same path that we have engaged in for the last three rounds will most likely yield the same result and that would be a failure to come to a successful conclusion," Kirk told a news conference.
From the current incomplete package of deals it was clear what the United States would give up but hard to see exactly what it would gain, he said, given the many exceptions to an overall agreement for various countries, making the deal opaque.
"We think getting more clarity around that may be the key to helping us find a solution to a way forward," Kirk said after a meeting of ministers at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Kirk has also called on big emerging countries to open their markets further to foreign goods to help secure a deal in the Doha talks, launched in late 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade.
But the trade ministers from India, Brazil and South Africa, meeting on the sidelines of the OECD, rejected that call and said any renewed dialogue must be part of a "transparent and inclusive multilateral process."
"At this final stage of negotiations, in the midst of the worst economic environment since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to assume that further unilateral concessions from developing countries will be forthcoming, especially in the context of the current economic crisis," the three ministers said in a statement.
Developing countries fear they could be strongarmed into an unbalanced deal through a one-on-one approach.
The Doha talks have been effectively on ice since a meeting of ministers in July failed to clinch an outline deal.
A number of positive comments in recent weeks, not least from Kirk and his new Indian counterpart Anand Sharma, have kindled hopes the talks could resume shortly.
But the differences between rich and emerging countries over process and substance underline how difficult it will be to conclude the negotiations, which WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy says are 80 percent complete.
Developing countries say they are under pressure to open up while rich countries have hedged their sensitive farm sectors around with waivers and get-outs to any deal, and EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel ruled out any new concessions.
"We have tried our very best and we don`t move," Fischer Boel told reporters in Paris after meeting the newly appointed French farm minister, Bruno Le Maire, who echoed her words.
WTO chief Lamy told the OECD meeting that completing Doha "through a multilateral negotiating process coupled with bilateral discreet contacts among players" was all the more important because trade was expected to contract by 10 percent this year -- 14 percent in developed countries and 7 percent in developing countries.
The economic crisis underlying this contraction was also giving rise to protectionist pressures, he said.  Continued...
Original article

U.S. pushes for Israeli-Palestinian discussions

By Jeffrey Heller
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday it would make a new push for Israeli-Palestinian talks and U.S. envoy George Mitchell, en route to the region, hoped to lay the groundwork.
"The president has told me to exert all efforts to create the circumstance when the parties can begin immediate discussions," Mitchell told reporters at a Palestinian donors' conference in Oslo, referring to renewed negotiations that President Barack Obama has pledged to pursue.
In the Gaza Strip, militants opposed to a dialogue tried to blast open Israel's border fence.
Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants who had planned to breach the border fence with the Hamas-run territory by detonating explosives they had tied to five horses, a military spokesman said.
Middle East envoy Tony Blair said after the Oslo meeting Obama's push for a peace deal should be embraced by Arab states.
"For the Arab countries in particular we need their support... We need their support for the Palestinian Authority, their support for the peace process, their support in coming to a new ... understanding about how we can establish peace in the Middle East.
"President Obama needs something to come back to him, he's reaching out but he needs people to reach back and I think the next few months is all about seeing whether we can create the circumstances where that happens," he told Reuters.
POLICY SPEECH
Mitchell was to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday.
Netanyahu is at odds with Obama over the president's demand to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and has not endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy.
The Israeli leader is to make a major policy speech on Sunday in which a senior official said Netanyahu would "articulate his vision on how to move forward in the peace process with the Palestinians and with the larger Arab world."
Netanyahu has said he is ready to meet Abbas and begin talks on economic, security and political issues, which he has not specified.
Palestinians have rejected his proposed shift of focus away from territorial issues, whose complexity, Netanyahu has said, has frustrated U.S.-backed attempts to reach a final peace deal.
Abbas said renewed talks would be pointless unless Netanyahu first stopped settlement activity and endorsed Palestinian statehood as part of a 2003 peace "road map" that also calls on the Palestinian Authority to crack down on militants.
"If Israel rejects this and rejects the two-state solution, then, what shall we negotiate?" Abbas asked during a visit to a school in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Continued...
Source: Reuters

U.S. mulls putting North Korea back on terror list

By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is looking into putting North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism in response to its nuclear test last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview on Sunday.
"We're going to look at it. There's a process for it. Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism," she said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
Asked whether she had evidence of the North's support for international terrorism, Clinton said: "We're just beginning to look at it. I don't have an answer for you right now."
The United States removed North Korea from its terrorism blacklist in October in a bid to revive faltering six-nation denuclearization talks that have completely broken down.
The impoverished Communist-ruled Asian nation was taken off the list after agreeing to a series of verification measures at its nuclear facilities. It has been condemned internationally since its defiant May 25 nuclear test.
"Obviously they were taken off of the list for a purpose, and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions," Clinton said.
Coming off the list meant North Korea could better tap into international finance and see some trade sanctions lifted -- benefits that would be reversed, although other sanctions have remained as a result of its first nuclear test in 2006.
SUPPORT FROM RUSSIA AND CHINA
Clinton said she expected a strong sanctions resolution against North Korea to emerge from the U.N. Security Council, with the backing of China and Russia, which previously balked at such measures and hold veto powers on the council.
"I think what is going somewhere is additional sanctions in the United Nations -- arms embargo, other measures taken against North Korea with the full support of China and Russia," she said in reference to the ongoing U.N. deliberations.
Clinton said the United States would work hard to cut off the flow of money to North Korea.
"If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we'll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia. I don't think anybody wants to see that," she said.
"And so part of what we're doing is again, sharing with other countries our calculus of the risks and the dangers that would lie ahead if we don't take very strong action."
Renewed tensions over North Korea's nuclear program coincide with the trial in recent days of two U.S. female journalists held in Pyongyang.
Analysts say the pair, who were working for the Current TV network co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, have become bargaining chips in negotiations with the United States. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Netanyahu wants "maximum understanding" with U.S

By Jeffrey Heller
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would strive for "maximum understanding" with Washington on peace issues but gave no sign he intends to bow to its demand to halt settlement expansion.
Under pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama over settlements in the occupied West Bank and Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu has not endorsed, the Israeli leader said he would set out his policies in a major speech later this month.
"I want to make clear, it is our intention to achieve peace with the Palestinians and with the countries of the Arab world while attempting to reach maximum understanding with the United States and our friends in the world," Netanyahu said.
"I aspire to a stable peace based on the solid foundations of the security of the state of Israel and its citizens," he told his right-wing cabinet at its weekly meeting.
By mentioning security, Netanyahu again highlighted an issue he has called paramount to Israel's approach to peace with the Palestinians, whom he has said should have self-government but only limited powers of sovereignty.
In a speech on Thursday to Muslims in which he reaffirmed a U.S. commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state, Obama said Washington "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."
Despite the rare rift with the United States, Israel's main ally, Israeli officials said Netanyahu has no intention of risking the collapse of his coalition by ceasing all settlement activity in the West Bank.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Netanyahu to announce his acceptance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a settlement freeze and "a return to serious negotiations."
Half a million Jews live in settlement blocks built in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, areas where, with the Gaza Strip, Palestinians want to establish a state.
U.S. ENVOY
Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is to begin a visit to Israel and the West Bank on Monday. Western and Israeli officials said the White House was formulating a blueprint for a renewed peace process that could be presented early next month.
Without giving a date, Netanyahu said "Next week, I will make a major diplomatic speech in which I will present to the citizens of Israel our principles for achieving peace and security."
Israel Radio said he would deliver the address on June 14. A Netanyahu spokesman said he could not confirm the date.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, head of the center-left Labour Party in Netanyahu's government, held out the possibility of a softening in Israel's position on Palestinian statehood in return for an easing of U.S. pressure over settlements.
Referring to a 2003, U.S.-endorsed peace plan, Barak told reporters the government should declare it is "committed to all previous agreements signed by previous governments, including the 'road map', whose goal is two states for two peoples." Continued...
Source: Reuters