Key policy issues on early agenda

President Obama's first week in power was a whirl of activity as he met with war leaders to start determining a plan to draw down from Iraq and as he met with congressional leaders to tackle the economy. Here are some key issues that emerged Friday, many of which Obama will continue to face in the days ahead.

Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner's assertion that China "manipulates" its currency has complicated a key front in President Obama's efforts to improve U.S. relations with the world.

China experts said there were several other signs that the Obama administration could take a harder line toward Beijing, including Obama's emphasis on climate change and the environment in trade negotiations and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's focus on human rights.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded tartly to Geithner's charge. "Directing unsubstantiated criticism at China on the exchange-rate issue will only help U.S. protectionism and will not help towards a real solution to the issue," the ministry told Agence France-Presse on Friday.

China starts off on weaker footing with Obama than it did with President George W. Bush, who cultivated Chinese leaders.

Obama has little personal experience of China, and lacks advisers with a deep interest or knowledge of it. With the U.S. economy in a slump, and China trying to increase exports to cushion a slowdown there, experts worry that U.S.-Chinese trade relations could deteriorate. And if the United States repairs its image in some parts of the world, that could make it harder for China to present itself as an alternative to U.S. influence in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

"The Chinese are probably one of the few people in the world who were sorry to see President Bush go," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked on China policy for the Clinton administration. "They are uneasy about Hillary Clinton. She has, in their assessment, not been a friend of China."

The Treasury must decide this spring whether to label China a currency manipulator, under a law that requires the administration to report to Congress on the exchange-rate practices of trading partners.

Iraq is stable enough to allow the roughly 22,000 U.S. Marines there to withdraw, the service's top general said Friday.

"The time is right for Marines in general terms to leave Iraq," said Marine Corps Commandant James Conway.

That war has become largely a nation-building mission rather than the pitched fighting in which Marines excel, he said.

Conway said he wants to see as many as 20,000 Marines deployed instead to the fight in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents and the Taliban and Al-Qaida benefit from both a nearby safe haven and booming trade in narcotics.

"When you've got those two elements you've got the potential for a long-term insurgency," he said. "That's where the Marines ought to be."

The Marine Corps can't fight in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, because it does not have enough combat support troops and equipment to divide between the missions.

President Obama is expected to go to the Pentagon next week to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff-- the military heads of each service-- in their secure meeting room known as "the tank." Sorting out troop levels in Afghanistan and Iraq is expected to be on the agenda.

Obama on Friday struck down the Bush administration's ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information -- an inflammatory policy that has bounced in and out of law for the past quarter-century.

Obama's move was welcomed by liberal groups and denounced by abortion rights opponents.

Known as the "Mexico City policy," the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since Ronald Reagan established it in 1984.

"For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us," Obama said. "I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."

The Bush policy had banned U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. The rule also had prohibited federal funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.

Obama's action came one day after the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

In the first such strikes since Obama's inauguration, suspected U.S. missile barrages Friday killed at least 18 people in the tribal region near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.

The two raids suggested that the new U.S. administration intends to press ahead with attacks against Islamic militants in rural areas, even though the campaign has been politically costly to Pakistan's Western-leaning civilian government. Although Pakistani leaders have lodged formal diplomatic objections to the U.S. airstrikes, the government is widely believed to have given tacit permission to U.S. forces to carry out such raids -- as long as they do not involve sending ground forces into Pakistani territory. Pakistani news reports said at least five of those killed in Friday's strikes in the North and South Waziristan tribal areas were militants. Dozens of such raids were carried out in the past six months by the Bush administration, killing several Al-Qaida-linked figures. But scores of civilians, including women and children, also died, local officials said.

Obama and his top national security aides are likely in the coming days to review other counterterrorism measures put in place by the Bush administration, U.S. officials said.

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