US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Norwegian officials Friday as she toured Scandinavia to praise the work of key US partners in a range of global hotspots.
"We don't have any problems we are confronting, we don't have any difficult issues we are negotiating. But we have a lot of work ahead of us," Clinton said in a toast to Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
Clinton, who met earlier with Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and paid a courtesy call to King Harald V, has used her visit here and to Denmark Thursday to express appreciation for the role the two NATO allies have played in Afghanistan.
But the trip, which will take her to Sweden over the weekend, has also been overshadowed by US tensions with Russia over its defence of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the face of continuing bloodshed there.
In Copenhagen, she accused Moscow of propping up the Assad regime, helping to push Syria toward a destabilising civil war, and said she would be paying particular attention to Russia in her talks over the next several days.
"We have to bring the Russians on board because the dangers we face are terrible," Clinton said.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, said Moscow would not yield to pressure on Syria.
Besides Syria, Clinton has also spotlighted cooperation with the Scandinavian countries on the environment, including climate change and clean energy, and development issues.
She was to deliver a speech at a global health conference dedicated to maternal and child health.
After her meetings, she was to travel to Tromsoe, a city on the Arctic Circle, to discuss the effects of climate change in the potentially energy-rich region.
After Scandinavia, Clinton travels to the Caucasus with stops in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan before winding up the nine-day trip in Turkey.
Source: AFP Global Edition
