Husband's charity clouds Clinton nomination

By Arshad Mohammed and John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Concerns about her husband's foreign fund-raising cast a shadow over Sen. Hillary Clinton's nomination as U.S. secretary of state when Republicans on Tuesday pressed her to do more to avoid conflicts of interest.

Clinton is expected to easily win confirmation as President-elect Barack Obama's top diplomat and she carefully avoided breaking new ground on foreign policy as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But the work of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and his William J. Clinton Foundation raised questions from Republicans who believe a deal between the charity and the Obama team does not do enough to avoid conflicts of interest.

"The core of the problem is that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favour with the secretary of state," said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel's respected and centrist senior Republican.

"The only certain way to eliminate this risk going forward is for the Clinton Foundation to forswear new foreign contributions when Senator Clinton becomes secretary of state," Lugar said, although he also proposed a series of compromise steps that stopped short of a full cutoff of foreign funding.

Clinton, who was greeted warmly by her fellow senators, said she and her husband had sought to avoid any appearance of conflicts of interest but resisted Republican calls to change the pact between his foundation and the Obama transition.

Under that agreement, signed on December 12, the Clinton foundation made public a list of its past donors, promised to annually publish the names of its future donors, and to submit future foreign donations to a State Department ethics review.

"There is no intention to amend" the agreement, Clinton said. "I will certainly do everything in my power to make sure that the good work of the foundation continues without there being any untoward effects on me and my service."