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Clinton to travel to Pacific region next week

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to the Pacific region next week, traveling to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia, spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday. Leaving Washington on Jan. 11, Clinton will first go to Honolulu, where she will give meet with Pacific Command leaders and give a speech Jan. 12 "focused on Asia-Pacific multilateral ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to the Pacific region next week, traveling to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia, spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to the Pacific region next week, traveling to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia, spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday.

Leaving Washington on Jan. 11, Clinton will first go to Honolulu, where she will give meet with Pacific Command leaders and give a speech Jan. 12 "focused on Asia-Pacific multilateral engagement," Kelly said.

On Jan. 14, she will travel to Papua New Guinea to meet with civil society leaders to discuss "environmental protection and women’s empowerment." The next day she moves to Auckland to meet with Prime Minister John Key and meet with veterans at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

On Jan. 17, Clinton moves on to Australia, where she will hit two cities, Canberra and Melbourne. In Canberra she will link up with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The two of them will hold what’s called the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) with Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Australian Defense Minister John Falkner. The foursome will discuss, "key global and regional security challenges," Kelly said.

A State Department spokesman says that Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will accompany Clinton on the trip.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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