Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the next US secretary of state, president-elect Barack Obama said yesterday.

Obama also said Defense Secretary Robert Gates will continue on his post, Washington lawyer Eric Holder would be the new attorney general and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano would be the next homeland security secretary.

The president-elect appeared at a morning news conference in Chicago to announce the 61-year-old Clinton's nomination as the top US diplomat.

The wife of former US president Bill Clinton won more primaries and delegates than any other woman candidate in American history. But after a long campaign, she lost narrowly to Obama, who became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee in June 2008.

She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973 and was elected senator for New York State in 2000. That election marked the first time a US First Lady had run for public office and made her the first woman senator to represent New York.

She was re-elected to the Senate by a wide margin in 2006.

In the Senate, she initially supported President George W. Bush on some foreign policy issues, which included voting for the Iraq War Resolution. But later she began opposing the administration on the way it was conducting the war in Iraq. She has opposed Bush on most domestic issues.

But despite her change in stance, Fu Mengzi, assistant president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations said, "there will be a continuity in US foreign policy" toward China.

"The US foreign policy will continue to be guided by its national interests, which is to work with China" on major issues, Fu said. In fact, the basic tone of Hillary Clinton toward China is consistent with that of key US political figures.

As a presidential candidate, she wrote during the US election campaign: "Our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century.

"The US and China have vastly different values and political systems, yet even though we disagree profoundly on issues ranging from trade to human rights, religious freedom, labor practices, and Tibet, there is much that the US and China can and must accomplish together."

Fu said: "She will continue to press China on these issues (human rights and religious freedom), but we cannot tell exactly what her stance would be based only on her campaign claims."

Clinton has visited China several times, Fu said. She is not a stranger to the country and she knows full well that China's cooperation is very important for vital US interests.

In Washington, Obama also announced two senior foreign policy appointments outside the Cabinet: campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as UN ambassador and retired Marine General James L. Jones as national security adviser.