Mme. Secretary began the month on foreign travel, most of it her typical country-a-day routine, to countries engaged in disputes over rights in the South China Sea. It was a particularly hectic trip with a lot of bilaterals that would have been less necessary had the Law of the Sea Convention not been killed by the Tea Party members of Congress.
September is always a heavy month for a secretary of state with the U.N. General Assembly convening at the New York headquarters. For this particular SOS it has always been even busier since her husband simultaneously runs his Clinton Global Initiative in NYC, and she always makes an appearance. This year was altogether heavier than in the past since it was an election year and the president stayed only a short time and left her in charge in his wake. She acted as head-of-state through most of UNGA this year.
Punctuating all of this were demonstrations and riots at embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. The American School in Tunis was destroyed, and of course there was the deadly attack on the consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Here are some pictures from September starting with her visit to the Cook Islands.
On the third she was in Indonesia.
On the fourth she left Indonesia for China following a stop at Embassy Jakarta and a visit to the ASEAN Secretariat.
She remained in china through the fifth.
She was in Timor-Leste on the sixth when her husband addressed the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. Somehow they managed to find an internet connection for her to be able to watch.
The same day she arrived in Brunei, the first top U.S. diplomat to visit all 10 ASEAN countries.
From there she traveled to Vladivostok, Russia (birthplace of Yul Brynner) where she and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov signed a cooperation agreement.
She attended and spoke at an APEC conference.
She left Russia on the ninth for D.C. and although she had no public events on the 11th, we later learned from State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland that she was indeed at her office late into that night when the attack on the consulate occurred. The next day the sad aftermath rolled out from the Rose Garden of the White House to the State Department where devastated colleagues mourned the dead.
On the 14th, the coffins came home. She and President Obama were at the transfer ceremony.
The 18th was “Ladies’ Day” at the State Department. She welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi and held a signing ceremony with her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa.
As world leaders began to arrive in the U.S. for UNGA, there were events in D.C.
And on the 23rd it was off to UNGA and CGI in New York where her September ended.
When the General Assembly convened, it was clear how much she would be missed on the world stage.
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