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President-elect Barack Obama and Robert Gates are negotiating terms under which the defence secretary would remain as Pentagon chief in his administration, the Financial Times has learned.

Mr Obama, through an intermediary, has approached Mr Gates, who has served as defence secretary under President George W. Bush since 2006, about accepting the position, which would place a respected Republican appointee in his cabinet.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Mr Gates is seriously weighing the option. The two men are ironing out policy and personnel issues before a final offer could be made.

Mr Gates, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, has won bipartisan acclaim for his handling of the Pentagon since replacing Donald Rumsfeld in 2006.

Democrats had speculated that Mr Obama might choose Mr Gates to assemble a “team of rivals”, mirroring the approach of Abraham Lincoln who appointed former rivals to his cabinet in 1861.

Last weekend, Mr Obama told CBS television that he was reading about Lincoln, saying “there is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government,” and adding that he would appoint Republicans to his cabinet.

The “team of rivals” approach has taken on more currency after reports that Mr Obama is considering his former Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for secretary of state.

The Obama transition team declined to comment. Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, said he had “no knowledge” of any discussions, but pointed out that Mr Gates had never ruled out the possibility of staying.

“He has been clear for months now that although his desire is to return home to the Pacific Northwest and retire from the government once again, he has never closed the door on continuing to serve if needed,” said Mr Morrell.

The Obama camp has not been shy about expressing its admiration for Mr Gates. Richard Danzig, a top Obama adviser, said earlier this year that Mr Gates had been a good defence secretary, but would “an even better one in an Obama administration”.

“He is clearly a guy who has repeatedly heeded the call to service,” added Mr Morrell. “Secretary Gates is an old-fashioned patriot. He is a throwback to the days of wise men who put service to country above almost all else.”

One difference between Mr Obama and Mr Gates has been over Iraq. While Mr Obama has pledged to remove US troops within 16 months, Mr Gates has previously declined to endorse a timetable. This could become moot, however, after the US and Iraq this week signed a security pact that requires US troops to leave by 2012.

Other candidates that have been previously mentioned include Chuck Hagel, the retiring Republican senator from Nebraska, Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democratic senator, John Hamre, head of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, and Mr Danzig himself. Many defence experts believe Mr Danzig would be appointed deputy to Mr Gates as a secretary-in-waiting.

US allies have also praised Mr Gates. European officials privately say he is just as tough as Mr Rumsfeld, particularly on the issue of sending more troops to Afghanistan, but that his less abrasive manner in public is more effective. read more

Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup.

In many ways it is. The product is ideas.

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.

“What CAP has done is recapture the role of ideas as an important political force, something the Republicans had been better at for 25 years,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan policy-research organization in Washington.

CAP’s president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them.

Some of the group’s recommendations already have been adopted by the president-elect.

Withdrawal of Troops

These include the center’s call for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and a buildup of forces in Afghanistan, a plan for universal health coverage through employer plans and proposals to create purchasing pools that allow small businesses to spread the cost among a larger group of workers. Obama has endorsed much of a CAP plan to create “green jobs” linked to alleviating global climate change.

CAP also is advocating the creation of a “National Energy Council” headed by an official with the stature of the national security adviser and who would be charged with “transforming the energy base” of the U.S. In addition, CAP urges the creation of a White House “office of social entrepreneurship” to spur new ideas for addressing social problems.

To help promote its ideas, CAP employs 11 full-time bloggers who contribute to two Web sites, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room; others prepare daily feeds for radio stations. The center’s policy briefings are standing-room only, packed with lobbyists, advocacy-group representatives and reporters looking for insights on where the Obama administration is headed.

`Premier Progressive’

“The center is the premier progressive think tank in Washington,” said Mark Green, head of the New Democracy Project, an urban-affairs institute in New York.

Just eight days after the Nov. 4 election, CAP released a 300,000-word volume called “Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President” that offers advice on issues such as economic revival and fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Work on the book began almost a year ago.

CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach.

The center’s future was far from certain in 2003, when wealthy donors such as Soros and film producer Stephen Bing gave $10 million or more to fill what they believed was an intellectual void in the Democratic Party and create a vehicle to produce an agenda for the party’s eventual return to power.

Heritage Foundation

Podesta modeled the center on the Heritage Foundation, which became the go-to policy-research organization in 1981 when newly elected President Ronald Reagan embraced its conservative ideas embodied in a book called “Mandate for Leadership.” Heritage was just seven years old.

CAP and Heritage have something else in common.

“Others strive to be objective, we don’t,” said Jennifer Palmieri, CAP’s vice president for communications.

Podesta likes to say, “we’re not a think tank, we’re an action tank,” said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.

CAP isn’t the only Democratic-leaning research organization in Washington with enhanced cachet after Obama’s election.

The 92-year-old Brookings Institution, for example, has advisers in Obama’s inner circle, including economist Jason Furman and foreign-policy expert Susan Rice. Others are working either part-time or full-time in the Obama transition.

Podesta’s center isn’t even among the biggest or best- funded. Brookings has a staff of more than 400 and an annual budget of $48 million. Heritage has a staff of 200 and a budget of $60 million. The American Enterprise Institute, which has close ties to the administration of President George W. Bush, has about 140 staffers, including Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and a budget of $28 million.

Influence

Yet CAP may be the most influential. In addition to Podesta, at least 10 other CAP experts are advising the incoming administration, including Melody Barnes, the center’s executive vice president for policy who co-chairs the agency-review working group and Cassandra Butts, the senior vice president for domestic policy, who is now a senior transition staffer.

“John understood that ideas have power in this town, and he brought in super-bright people whose ideas have become essential reading,” Isaacson said.

CAP’s successes offer a lesson for Republican-leaning groups, said James McGann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who tracks policy groups.

“They’ve shown that one has to constantly innovate and be responsible to an ever-changing demographics and electorate, and have policies that are responsive to that,” McGann said.

article source http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aF7fB1PF0NPg

BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) - A Hong Kong cargo ship loaded with wheat bound for Iran has been hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, the official Xinhua agency said on Tuesday citing China’s maritime search and rescue centre.

There were 25 crew members on board, none of them from Hong Kong or the Chinese mainland. The ship was carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat to Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, the report said. Pirates in the area hijacked a Saudi supertanker with a $100 million oil cargo on Sunday.