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U.S.'s top diplomat, who lays a wreath at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, left, says administration will vigorously pursue state's creation.

JERUSALEM – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday the new U.S. administration will vigorously pursue the creation of a Palestinian state, stressing that movement toward Palestinian independence seems “inescapable.”

Clinton also said the U.S. would soon send two envoys to Syria for “preliminary conversations.” It was the most significant sign yet that the Obama administration is ready to mend relations with the Damascus regime. The U.S. withdrew its ambassador in 2005, accusing Syria of supporting terrorism.

“We have no way to predict what the future with our relations concerning Syria might be,” she told a Jerusalem news conference. “There has to be some perceived benefit of doing so for the United States and our allies and our shared values. But I think it is a worthwhile effort to go and begin these preliminary conversations.”  Clinton, making her first visit to the region as secretary of state, made her comments ahead of a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister designate. Netanyahu’s past criticism of peace talks and opposition to full Palestinian independence has raised concerns that his incoming government could clash with the U.S.

‘Vigorously engaged’
When asked about Netanyahu, she acknowledged the possibility of disagreements with the hawkish Israeli politician and made clear the U.S. will push forward with its efforts to forge a peace deal that includes the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

“The United States will be vigorously engaged in the pursuit of a two-state solution every step of the way,” she said. “The inevitability of working toward a two state-solution is inescapable.”

Ahead of their meeting, Netanyahu showed signs of backing off his previous pledges to abandon the current round of peace talks, launched in November 2007 at a U.S.-hosted summit.

That message would mark a change in the Likud leader’s long-stated position that peace talks are a waste of time because of the weakness of the Palestinian leadership. He has suggested in the past he would instead invest in the Palestinian economy while continuing Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank indefinitely.

And Clinton signaled that open confrontation with Israel is unlikely, stressing the close relationship between the two countries and saying Israel must ultimately decide what is in its best interests.

“We happen to believe that moving toward the two-state solution, step by step, is in Israel’s best interests. But obviously it’s up to the people and the government of Israel to decide how to define your interests,” she said.

Rocket attacks criticized
Clinton also stressed the “unrelenting” U.S. commitment to Israel’s security. Clinton specifically criticized continuing rocket attacks out of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“There is no doubt that any nation, including Israel, cannot stand idly by while its territory and people are subjected to rocket attacks,” she said at an earlier news conference with Israel’s ceremonial president, Shimon Peres.

Netanyahu, leader of the hardline Likud Party, is putting together a new coalition government after right-wing and Orthodox Jewish parties won a majority of seats in last month’s Israeli parliamentary election. He is expected to be sworn in as prime minister within weeks.

His criticism of U.S.-led Mideast peace talks during the recent election campaign — along with his reliance on small hardline partners — has raised fears that his government could clash with the Obama administration.

Netanyahu planned to tell the secretary of state that his government will continue peace talks with the Palestinians, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s Likud Party said.

“I think that Hillary Clinton, when she comes today, will find Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to continue to hold negotiations, not only on economic projects but also political negotiations, a political process,” said Likud lawmaker Silvan Shalom, a former foreign minister.

Tense relations with Syria
In Damascus, the U.S. Embassy announced that Jeffrey Feltman, the State Department’s top diplomat for the Middle East, would lead the American delegation headed to the Syrian capital.

Embassy spokeswoman Katherine Vandevate said the visit aims to build on his “substantive and constructive” meeting last month with Syria’s ambassador in Washington, Imad Moustapha.

U.S.-Syrian relations have long been tense, particularly since the U.S. ambassador was pulled out by the Bush administration in 2005 to protest Syria’s suspected role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Damascus denied involvement but in the uproar that followed was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, ending a 29-year dominance.

The United States has also criticized Syria for supporting militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and has accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq. Syria has said it is doing all it can to safeguard its long, porous border.

Clinton arrived in Jerusalem Monday evening from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, where she pledged $900 million in U.S. aid at an international donors conference for rebuilding the Gaza Strip after Israel’s recent offensive against its Hamas rulers.

A packed schedule of meetings with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem included talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. On Wednesday, she is to call on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

MOSCOW – President Barack Obama has written to his Russian counterpart suggesting U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe might be unnecessary if Moscow helped in blocking Iran’s progress toward building long-range missiles, senior administration officials said on Tuesday.

Plans for deploying U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to guard against Iranian attacks on U.S. allies in Europe, are among a host of issues that soured U.S.-Russia relations during the former Bush administration. There have been indications Obama, who has vowed to shake up American foreign policy, might be willing to set aside the missile defense system.

“President Obama sent a letter to Medvedev that covered a broad range of issues, including missile defense and how it relates to the Iranian threat,” one senior administration official said on condition of anonymity to discuss private communications of the president.

“The suggestion is that need for missile defense deployment could become unnecessary if, working together with Russia, the Iran missile threat is addressed,” the official told The Associated Press.

Meeting next month
Obama and Medvedev were expected to meet at the G-20 economic summit of advanced and developing nations in London next month, according to the officials.

They also emphasized that “we will continue to consult with the Czechs and Poles as we move forward with decisions on missile defense.” That message was an obvious attempt to ease fears among those two U.S. allies — former Soviet satellite states — who are deeply invested in the missile defense system as an assurance of American backing against a resurgent Russia.

The administration has previously hinted that the policy on the missile defense shield that former President George B. Bush fiercely advocated was open to reassessment.

The Obama letter was first reported in Tuesday’s editions of The New York Times.

No quid pro quo
In Moscow, Medvedev spokeswoman Nataliya Timakova said that Obama’s letter contained various proposals and assessments, but offered no quid pro quo.

“Obama’s letter contained various proposals and assessments of the current situation,” she said . “But the message did not contain any specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives.”

She further disclosed that Obama’s letter was in response to one from Medvedev and that the Kremlin appreciated the “positive” spirit of Obama’s message.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged the United States to restore diplomatic relations with Iran, Russian news agencies reported. “This would be an important element in stabilizing the situation in the region,” he said.

Meeting with Clinton on Friday
Lavrov is scheduled to hold talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Geneva on Friday in the highest-level meeting between the two nations since Obama took office.

At a February gathering of NATO defense chiefs in Krakow, Poland, Gates said that Washington would review the missile plan “in the context of our relationship with both Poland and the Czech Republic” as well as with NATO and Russia. The language marked a departure from the tone of the Bush administration, which enthusiastically promoted the plan and signed deals last year with Warsaw and Prague.

Gates said that if Moscow really wants to stop the missile shield, it should help eliminate the threat of a missile attack from Iran.

The Obama administration has been vocal about its desire to repair rifts between the U.S. and Russia. In Munich last month, Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering of world leaders, “It’s time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.”

Members of the Mexican federal police and organise cocaine packages to be destroyed in Manzanillo port, Mexico.

If you asked Americans what countries posed a danger to the United States, most would probably point to an emboldened Iran, the militant havens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, or resurgent China and Russia.

But there is a growing fear in security circles that a nation at America’s doorstep may descend swiftly into chaos and prove an immediate threat. That country is Mexico, which is locked in an increasingly violent struggle with drug cartels.  “In terms of worst-case scenarios … two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico,” says a major study by the United States Joint Forces Command that came out at the end of 2008.

The military planners go on to say that Mexico’s “government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels.”

An increasing number of Mexicans have been forced to live with the daily effects of murder, kidnapping and general lawlessness, but the violence is also spilling across the 2,000-mile border into the United States, which is the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs as well as a major source of weapons used by the gangs that traffic them.

More than 5,300 Mexicans are thought to have been slain in 2008, double the number in 2007.

The conflict terrorizes communities throughout Mexico but Ciudad Juarez, a city with a population of about 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, Texas, is arguably suffering more than most.