When told that Obama Administration policy in Asia was not that different from the Bush Administration policy in Asia Clinton disagreed. 'I mean, part of what we have done is to organise ourselves so that we can concentrate on many important issues at the same time.'

'And I think the feeling on the part of much of the world was that the prior administration, for understandable reasons, focused so much on some of the specific issues, like Iraq, et cetera, that really grabbed it and required a lot of attention, that much of the rest of the world felt that they were kind of second tier.'

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)