By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Hillary Clinton is expected to win easy confirmation as U.S. secretary of state but will face questions about her husband's foreign business dealings when she appears before a congressional committee on Tuesday.
Clinton's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be scrutinized for clues on how U.S. President-elect Barack Obama may approach Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he takes office on January 20.
Obama surprised many by tapping his former rival for the presidency to become his secretary of state, selecting a political heavyweight who won more than 18 million votes in the Democratic primaries before dropping out of the race.
Analysts said there was little doubt about the Senate's ultimate approval of the former first lady to be the top U.S. diplomat. Clinton, who was elected in 2006 to a second term as a New York senator, is expected to benefit from the tradition of senatorial courtesy towards fellow senators appointed to high office.
"We have great confidence in her ability to do the job well," Sen. John Kerry, the committee's Democratic chairman who was himself once viewed as a candidate for secretary of state, told Reuters. "I think she will be overwhelmingly confirmed."
Analysts said members of the committee will ask about the business and philanthropic dealings of Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, but they said they did not expect that to derail her nomination.
"She is going to have prepared answers for all those questions," said Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia. "At a certain point, the Republicans are going to let it go."
To pre-empt concerns about potential conflicts of interest, Bill Clinton's charitable foundation in December made public its donors, which include Saudi Arabia, Norway and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
NO SURPRISES EXPECTED
Democratic sources have said the former president offered to allow ethics reviews of his future business and charitable activities should his wife serve as secretary of state.
"We don't expect surprises," said Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, the panel's senior Republican. "There certainly will be questions on the Clinton foundation, and also on every corner of the world, as there always are for the confirmation hearing for the secretary of state."
Among the top issues likely to be raised is the military offensive that Israel launched in the Gaza Strip on December 27 with the stated goal of ending Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Obama has said little about the conflict, stressing there is only one U.S. president at a time. However, on Sunday he said it was vital "to be engaged and involved immediately" in the search for Middle East peace.
Critics accuse President George W. Bush of having largely neglected the dispute until his final year in office, when his push for a peace deal by the end of 2008 ended in failure.
Bush also was faulted for initial reluctance to deal directly with North Korea and Iran to try to curb their nuclear ambitions.
Obama has said he is willing to open a dialogue with Iran and has suggested the possibility of presidential engagement with senior Iranian officials, a stance that Clinton dismissed as "naive" during the presidential primaries.
Analysts said that senators likely will search in vain for differences between Obama's and Clinton's foreign policy views, saying these were magnified on the campaign trail and will be minimized on Tuesday.
"Even when they disagreed, it was as much about instincts, style, tone as anything else," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Bill Trott)
