Clinton praises Mamata for overthrowing Left

WASHINGTON: Terming her trip to Kolkata as remarkable, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was all praise for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee saying despite being a women she successfully ended 34-year-old Left rule in the state.

Clinton was on a 3-day visit to India from May 7. This was the first-ever visit by a US Secretary of State to Writers' Buildings to hold a meeting with a chief minister.

Both Clinton and Banerjee are listed among the 100 top influential people in world by Time magazine.

In her keynote address after receiving Century Award at the New York Women's Foundation Breakfast, Clinton termed her trip to Kolkata as remarkable.

"I went last week to West Bengal in East India and had two remarkable experiences - meeting the newly elected chief minister, a woman, who on her own started a new political party and built that political party over many years, and just successfully ousted Communist Party that had been in office for 30, 34 years or so, and who is trying now to govern a state with 90 million people in it," Clinton said.

Clinton also referred to a meeting she had with a group of women in Kolkata.

"I met with a group of women - mostly Indian, some American - who, along with some of the men who were running organisations to rescue girls from having been trafficked into prostitution - and I met some of the girls and the young women, and their stories sounded remarkably like the ones we heard this morning.

"And in particular, the very last line of one of our last presenters that change takes time and love makes the difference," she said.

"So when I was introduced to a young girl, probably about 10, who had, with her mother, been rescued from a brothel, who was dressed in her karate outfit and she asked me, 'Do you want to see me do karate'- I said, 'I really do."

Clinton said amidst laughter and applause as she referred to the conversation she had with a young girl at that meeting.