KEY POINTS:
President-elect Barack Obama will hold a veto over former President Bill Clinton's US$400,000-a-pop speaking engagements under a detailed legal deal that allows Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State.
The President-elect was to unveil his national security team today, gambling that appointing the former first lady as foreign policy chief will restore some heft to American diplomacy.
To prevent the announcement getting bogged down in the Clinton soap opera, aides to Obama revealed details of the agreement with Clinton, whose post-White House business and philanthropic dealings threaten to expose a thicket of conflicts of interest.
The vetting of Hillary Clinton for the State Department job turned into a detailed examination of the funding of Bill Clinton's charitable foundation and of his Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which works to find solutions to Aids, climate change and poverty.
The former President will reveal the names of 200,000 donors to the two institutions and publish details of future contributions. US law does not require such disclosures but his refusal to do so was exploited by opponents of his wife's bid for the presidency, including Obama, who said during the primaries that the Clintons were "veterans of non-disclosure".
With Hillary Clinton at the State Department, her husband's business dealings had threatened to be an even more serious embarrassment. Bill Clinton's projects lean heavily on contacts from his White House days, with donors including at least four Middle Eastern Governments.
Even as his wife was first meeting the Obama transition team, Bill Clinton was talking up her experience for the job at an economic forum in Kuwait. He made more than US$10 million last year from speeches.
So it was that the Obama team and the Clintons entered into a finicky legal negotiation more akin to a corporate merger than a straightforward political appointment. Over almost three weeks, Bill Clinton agreed to turn over all the financial details of his foundation and business dealings and entered into a nine-point plan that limits his ability to embarrass his wife and - more importantly - the White House.
Future speaking engagements will be vetted by the State Department and, if necessary, by the White House. The CGI will also be legally separated from the former President's charitable foundation, so that its activities lobbying foreign Governments and proposing international policy co-ordination are held at arm's length from Bill Clinton himself. Future meetings held by the CGI will have to be based in the US.
Former President Bill Clinton agreed:
* To disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation since its inception in 1997 and all contributors going forward.
* To refuse donations from foreign Governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference.
* To cease holding CGI meetings overseas.
* To volunteer to step away from day-to-day management of the foundation while his wife is Secretary of State.
* To submit his speaking schedule to review by the State Department and White House counsel.
* To submit any new sources of income to a similar ethical review.
- INDEPENDENT
