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They have been foes and they have been, kind of, friends. And on Friday afternoon, President Obama and former President Bill Clinton walked unexpectedly into the White House briefing room for a news conference that was part surreal flashback, part one-two political punch.
With Mr. Obama standing largely silently at his side, Mr. Clinton took over the lectern to lend his backing to the tax compromise the White House reached this week with Republicans. And then Mr. Clinton went on, for half an hour, answering questions and holding forth on topics from triangulation to Haiti to the mortgage crisis and the nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

Even after the 44th president excused himself and left the room, the 42nd went on. On cable TV, Mr. Clinton’s presence in front of the blue backdrop with the White House logo was familiar, as were the wagging finger and the occasional bitten lip.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama turned up suddenly after meeting privately together for almost 90 minutes in the Oval Office. With no warning to Mr. Obama’s aides, the two men wandered through the nearly deserted West Wing — most staff members were at a holiday party — and tried to get into the briefing room but found the door locked. Only after they finally encountered Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, were arrangements made to turn on the lights and microphone and assemble the press corps.

“I have reviewed this agreement that the president reached with the Republican leaders,” Mr. Clinton told reporters. “The agreement taken as a whole is, I believe, the best bipartisan agreement we can reach to help the most Americans.”

After finishing one soliloquy, Mr. Clinton summed up with, “for what it’s worth, it’s what I think.”

From the side, and just out of camera range, Mr. Obama piped up: “It’s worth a lot.”

But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president politely interjected that Michelle Obama was expecting him at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during December.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting,” Mr. Obama said.

“I don’t want to make her mad,” Mr. Clinton quipped. “Please go.”

And with that, Mr. Obama quietly departed, leaving Mr. Clinton to continue his conversation with the media that so bedeviled him in the same room so often.

The decision to ask Mr. Clinton to the White House, and then to have him make a public statement, was the culmination of a campaign by the administration to put pressure on Congressional Democrats by highlighting support for the tax deal from Democrats around the country, from the mayor of Kokomo, Ind., to governors. On Friday, they announced support from the mayors of Akron, Ohio, and Orlando, Fla.

But Mr. Clinton is clearly the biggest gun in that arsenal.

“In my opinion, this is a good bill, and I hope that my fellow Democrats will support it,” Mr. Clinton said. “We all see this differently. But I really believe this will be a significant net plus for the country.”

Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Obama’s willingness to compromise as a principled decision.

“There are a lot of fights worth having,” he said, “but this holds the promise that after the fights are over, we will be able to find principled compromise on those as well. To me, that’s worth doing.”

The World Health Organization is shifting its position in favor of vaccinating against cholera, acknowledging a growing clamor for ways to slow Haiti’s outbreak.
So far, the cholera vaccine has seen little use in Haiti, where the disease has killed more than 2,000 people and is still spreading. However, major obstacles remain, including supply shortages, transportation problems and the need to administer the vaccine several times for it to be effective.

But the Pan American Health Organization, which represents the W.H.O. in the Western Hemisphere, recently learned that there might be one million to two million doses of vaccine in the world, not just the 200,000 it originally thought, Dr. Jon K. Andrus, the Pan American organization’s deputy director, said Friday. “We recognize that it’s time to rethink our position,” he said. “We don’t want to miss an opportunity.”

His organization will hold a meeting of experts in Washington next Friday to consider whether to buy those doses and move them to Haiti.

Even if the group agrees to move forward, there would be no quick fix. Most of the doses are in bulk form, and it could take up to two months to have them ready, Dr. Andrus said. Also, the vaccines have not been tested by the W.H.O.

Also on Friday, Dr. Paul Farmer, who is well known for fighting AIDS in Haiti, endorsed broader use of the vaccine there, and called for creating emergency stockpiles of millions of doses to keep cholera from spreading to other countries.

He endorsed measures like searching Haiti’s central mountains for people too sick to reach clinics, using antibiotics even in moderate cases and rebuilding the water and sanitation networks shattered by January’s earthquake.

Other cholera experts, including a different team from Harvard Medical School, where Dr. Farmer teaches, have also called for stockpiling millions of doses to stop outbreaks, as is now done with measles vaccine and the flu drug Tamiflu.

There are only two brands of cholera vaccine in the world: Dukoral, made in Sweden, which is W.H.O.-approved and costs $40 per dose, and Shanchol, introduced last year by India’s Shantha Biotechnics at $6 a dose.

Though not approved by the World Health Organization, Shanchol was created at the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea, under a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and designed to meet W.H.O. standards.

Cholera is widespread in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and is estimated to kill more than 100,000 people a year in that region. Genetic testing has shown that Haiti’s outbreak is a strain from that area.

Until recently, cholera vaccines were little used. Older injectable ones protected less than half of those who were given them, and protection waned after a few months. The new vaccines are oral, making them easier to give, but they require two doses at least a week apart in adults and three in children and start providing protection a week later.

A spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders, which is fighting cholera in Haiti, said it had no position on vaccines yet because they were not available and needed too much time to work.

Creating a global stockpile against future outbreaks is “a separate issue” from the Haiti response, where doctors are going full out just to get dying people rehydrated, Dr. Andrus said.

Building one would be very expensive, but he noted that donor nations like the United States and Canada, foundations, and philanthropic groups have raised billions of dollars for vaccines against polio and other disease. They might help build a cholera stockpile now that better vaccines are being made, he said.

The U.S. grew so concerned about the possibility of an Islamist terrorist attack in Spain in 2007 that it proposed setting up a counterterrorism center in the country's second-largest city, according to confidential cables.

The three U.S. cables, released by WikiLeaks on Saturday, say the U.S. planned the "counterterrorism, anti-crime and intelligence center" at its consulate in Barcelona.

The goal was "combating the target-rich environment of terrorist and criminal activities centered in the region," which has a "presence of over 1 million Muslims," a 2007 cable says.

In March 2004, a total of 191 people were killed and more than 1,800 wounded in bombing attacks on Madrid commuter trains. Islamic militants claimed responsibility.

One U.S. cable, dated 2005, sets the scene, saying that "Spain is both a significant target of Islamic terrorist groups and a major logistical hub for Islamic extremist groups operating across the globe."

The 2007 cable says Spain "is a past and current al-Qaida target" and a critical player in U.S.-EU counterterrorism efforts.

It says Barcelona has a large Muslim population "susceptible to jihadist recruitment" and adds that "Spanish and U.S. authorities have identified Catalonia as a major Mediterranean center of radical Islamist activity."

According to the cable, heavy immigration - both legal and illegal - from North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria) and Southeast Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh) had made the region "a magnet for terrorist recruiters."

The plans for the proposed center say 13 agents would be strategically situated to monitor quickly who and what was passing through the area from places such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and the south of France.

"The threat in Catalonia is clear," the cable says, categorizing Barcelona as a "crossroads of worrisome activities" and a natural meeting place and transit point of people and goods moving to and through the region from all countries bordering the western Mediterranean.

It is not clear whether the center was ever created, and the U.S. Embassy in Madrid declined to comment about that Saturday.

Embassy spokesman Jeff Galvin would only say that the U.S. and Spain enjoy "excellent cooperation" in counterterrorism investigations.

This view is echoed in an October 2006 U.S. cable, which says that Spain "has made great strides in disrupting terrorist cells and frustrating would-be terrorist plots" and that the U.S. was pleased with Spain's counterterrorism cooperation.

Last month, 11 men - nine of Pakistani nationality or origin - went on trial in Barcelona for allegedly plotting to stage suicide attacks in that city on orders from the Pakistan Taliban.

Police foiled the alleged plan with a series of raids in January 2008 after a member of the cell designated to blow himself up got cold feet and alerted authorities, a Spanish prosecutor said.