WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will discuss the international market and humanitarian, security and climate change issues in Asia, officials said.
Clinton will leave Washington Feb. 15 and visit Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China, expected to return Feb. 22, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Thursday during a news briefing.
While North Korea wasn't mentioned as a stop, Wood said "the issue of North Korea will come up in conversations. We all want to see how we can get the North Koreans to abide by their international obligations and to see how, through the six-party framework, we can get them to live up to those obligations."
Clinton is going to Asia as her first diplomatic trip because she thought it "would send a tremendous signal to Asia and others in the world of the importance of Asia, particularly, to our foreign policy agenda," Wood said, "And that's the basic reason. It's an important part of the world, a very strategic part of the world, and it's logical for the secretary to want to go there."
