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QUESTION: Madame Secretary, speaking of Iran, UN Ambassador Susan Rice talked about - yesterday said, we look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran. Is that the policy that's been arrived at? The President has spoken about coming up with a comprehensive policy toward Iran. How do you see it unfolding, and will there be someone delegated, such as a Dennis Ross or some other person, to take charge of Iran, in particular?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think Ambassador Rice was reiterating the President's position, which has been very clear that he reserves the right to engage in whatever way he deems best, at whatever time he chooses to further American interests. And clearly, that is not limited to any one country. It is a broad statement of our approach. We are engaged ourselves in a vigorous policy analysis of a number of problems and challenges that we face around the world. And we will be, you know, rolling out ideas and plans as we go forward.

The President and I thought it was important that we, as quickly as possible, set forth our policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan, because we knew we wanted to reengage vigorously from the very beginning in the Middle East. And, you know, we chose as an envoy someone who - we have great confidence in his ability to do that. And to carry the message from the President, from myself, from our government that, you know, we're going to be working on a series of short-term objectives with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but that we remain committed to the long-term objective of a comprehensive peace that provides security in the context of a two-state solution for the Palestinians.

With Afghanistan and Pakistan, there has been an ongoing review that was begun under the former administration that has put a lot of actions in motion. And we are engaged very vigorously in trying to assess what has been done before and what we are going to be doing. And we thought it imperative that we had a high-level representative - and in this case, Richard Holbrooke - to be guiding that process with us.

There will be other decisions made as we go forward. But I don't think anyone should be surprised by our willingness to engage, to be active in existing forums, to look for other ways of reaching out on behalf of this new Administration.

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QUESTION: And on Iran, President Obama in his interview with Al Arabiya last night, according to the transcript, said - you know, he echoed the clenched fist, open hand. But he said specifically, you know, as Iran opens its - unclenches its fist, it will find an open hand. That sounded almost as if the ball was in their court. And I wonder if you can give us any sense of how you will judge whether Iran is willing to engage in some kind of a negotiation with the United States. Do you want to do that informally? Do you want to do that through third parties? Do you want to do that through non-officials like Mr. Pickering, for example, who has contacts with the Iranians to some degree? Or do you actually think it's - you're going to have to have an official gauge that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: With respect to Iran, there is a clear opportunity for the Iranians, as the President expressed in his interview, to demonstrate some willingness to engage meaningfully with the international community. Whether or not that hand becomes less clenched is really up to them. But as we look at the opportunities available to us, we're going to have a very broad survey of what we think we can do. The P-5+1 talks, which will reconvene next week, I believe, are an already existing vehicle that we will again monitor. And there's just a lot that we are considering that I'm not prepared to discuss.

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