The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy brings together the toughest national security crowd in the Western world, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton played it safe and cool here on Sunday. In her first appearance before the clubby - and overwhelmingly male - gathering of experts, Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, showered praise on the United Nations as she called on it to reform and uttered only the most indirect rebuke of the Bush administration. In her strongest plea, she advocated a direct NATO role to stop the killing in the Darfur region of Sudan - including logistical, communication and transportation support. "We cannot continue to say 'Never again' as it happens again before our eyes," she said, although the flatness of her delivery robbed her words of their potential impact.Mrs. Clinton smiled and evoked chuckles when she thanked Secretary General Kofi Annan "for giving my husband a new job" as the United Nations' special envoy for countries affected by the tsunami crisis.
She was welcomed - even praised - by the audience. Antje Vollmer, vice president of the German Parliament, and one of the few women at the conference, told Mrs. Clinton that "personally, politically and intellectually, it was a great pleasure to listen to you." Miomir Zuzul, the foreign minister of Croatia, thanked her for her "excellent" speech.
The speech was a collaborative effort. Mrs. Clinton sought input from a number of Americans in the forum, among others Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as her husband's ambassador to the United Nations and to Germany; Samuel R. Berger, her husband's national security adviser; Jeffrey H. Smith, the former general counsel at the C.I.A. when her husband was president; and Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for the first President Bush.
Mrs. Clinton, who supported the invasion of Iraq, referred to the "diplomatic train wreck" in the United Nations Security Council in 2003 that failed to forge consensus on the American-led war and split apart the trans-Atlantic alliance, without saying who was to blame. She said the Bush administration and "its conservative allies" were wrong to denounce the United Nations "in violent terms," since the decisions to deny authority for military action in Iraq were made by the member countries.
In the question-and-answer period, she made clear that she was by no means suggesting that NATO expand "meaninglessly" in the world, but added that there were a number of areas where NATO intervention in pursuit of a United Nations mandate made sense. She urged closer cooperation between NATO and Russia, whose military, she noted, had played an important and timely role in the tsunami relief effort.
Mrs. Clinton even mentioned that creative cooperation of NATO with countries like Russia and China and with regional organizations be put on the conference's agenda next year, suggesting she might become a regular fixture here, much the way a number of her fellow senators on the Armed Services Committee have become over the years.
At the conference's gala dinner on Saturday night, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, singled out Mrs. Clinton for praise. He noted that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, was absent from the conference last year "because he was pursuing a failed presidential campaign." Mr. McCain, who flirted with a presidential bid himself, suggested that Mrs. Clinton might be next, joking that he and Senator Lieberman "are fellow losers, but this year Senator Clinton is here to keep hope alive."
The conference's guest of honor was Mr. Annan, who urged NATO and the European Union to increase efforts to end the Darfur crisis. "Those organizations with real capacity - and NATO as well as the E.U. are well represented in this room - must give serious consideration to what, in practical terms, they can do to end this tragedy," Mr. Annan said. "Additional measures are urgently required."
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The Game is afoot - and McCain just can't help himself, again.