Bill Clinton may pay high price for Hillary's job

QUESTIONS about former president Bill Clinton's business dealings are clouding speculation that Barack Obama is poised to offer his wife, Hillary, the post of secretary of state.

Mr Obama's officials are now investigating Mr Clinton's business affairs, including those involving Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, over possible conflict-of-interest issues.

The New York Times reported yesterday that two donors who gave $1 million apiece for Mr Clinton's presidential library in Arkansas did so while under investigation by the Clinton administration's Justice Department in the late 1990s.

But party insiders say they expect an accommodation will be reached, under which Mr Clinton agrees to accept no more cash from donors without prior approval, if his wife is given the coveted post. He may also remove himself from the fundraising side of his charitable Clinton Global Initiative organisation.

Mr Obama has yet to confirm speculation that began at the end of last week that he will name Mrs Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primary elections, as being in the running for the post with other candidates, including the New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations.

But one party source said the failure to scotch the rumours was a sign that the plan was well advanced. "I think if the Obama people were not serious about offering her the job, they'd not have allowed this media speculation."

Any decision to appoint Mrs Clinton would be in line with Mr Obama's public declaration that he wishes to bring disparate elements into his cabinet. His officials have already signalled the intention to include one, or possibly two, Republicans in the cabinet, with the Bush administration's defence secretary, Robert Gates, expected to retain his post.

Congressional confirmation hearings pose a possible obstacle to Mrs Clinton's appointment, with her husband's past taking the starring role.

But with the Democrats enjoying comfortable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, there is unlikely to be an appetite to block any appointment put to them by Mr Obama.

For Mrs Clinton, the secretary of state role may turn out to be a poisoned chalice: foreign policy in the United States is made in the White House, and all the more so since Mr Obama lined up his foreign policy team early in the primary elections.

Mrs Clinton is not part of that group as, by contrast, the present secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is part of the Bush administration's foreign policy team.

Taking the job would also see her give up her Senate seat and much of her domestic power base, weakening any bid to challenge Mr Obama in the primary elections in four years' time.

£6.8m made in a year on the public-speaking circuit

BILL Clinton faces having to curtail a substantial part of his business dealings if his wife, Hillary, becomes US secretary of state.

Since leaving the White House in 2000 he has reinvented himself as a gatherer of world philanthropists and the world's most highly paid speech-maker. Last year he earned $10.1 million (£6.8 million) for 54 speeches; he got $425,000 for one hour-long speech for the billionaire investor Ronald Burkle.

The Clintons' tax returns, published this year, show that the couple, who have joint bank accounts, have earned $109 million since leaving the White House, 80 per cent of which came from Mr Clinton's paid speeches and most of the rest from the publication of memoirs.

Mr Clinton has earned plaudits for setting up two charitable organisations, the Clinton Global Initiative and the William J Clinton Foundation, both of which raise money for programmes tackling poverty and Aids. But critics say the cash given to his foundation by the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the King of Morocco pose conflict-of-interest issues should his wife become secretary of state.

Many of these deals will have to be suspended for his wife to accept the key foreign policy post.