Washinton, April 14: The event at a New York Hotel last June was called “Colombia Is Passion,” but it was really a celebration of its guest of honour, Bill Clinton. Eager to repair its image in the United States and help boost support for a controversial United States-Colombia free-trade agreement, the beleaguered government of Alvaro Uribe came up with a clever PR move: give Clinton an award at a banquet, where the popular former president would say nice things about the country. According to lobbying records filed with the Justice Department, publicity for the event was handled by Burson-Marsteller, the powerhouse public-relations firm headed by Mark Penn, Bill Clinton’s longtime pollster. While he was representing Colombia under a $300,000 contract to promote the pact, Penn was also working as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

In April, former vice president Al Gore had pulled out of an environmental conference in Miami rather than appear with the Colombian president. But Bill Clinton, who had a friendly relationship with Uribe and had long been a free-trade booster, had no such qualms. In 2005, Clinton had first touted the virtues of a free-trade pact with Colombia during a tour of Latin America that netted him $800,000 in speaking fees.

While Bill Clinton was praising the Colombian leader, candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary has intensified her opposition to the Colombian trade pact and denounced the Uribe government’s human-rights record. Last week, the conflicting interests of Uribe, Penn and the two Clintons erupted as a campaign issue—and became a new distraction for the New York senator’s presidential bid. When The Wall Street Journal reported that Penn had recently met with Colombia’s ambassador, Penn tried to explain it away as an “error of judgment.” The Colombians, offended by the remark, promptly fired him. Hillary then removed him as top strategist.

It was one thing for Hillary to push out a key adviser. But she could hardly fire her husband. “Like other married couples who disagree on issues from time to time,” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson tells Newsweek, “she disagrees with her husband on this issue.”

Since leaving office in January 2001, Bill Clinton has circled the globe raising money for his charitable foundation. Bill Clinton’s private ventures have made the Clintons wealthy, and account for nearly two thirds of the $109 million the couple earned between 2000 and 2007, according to their tax returns released this month. But they have also created potentially difficult conflicts for his wife that may go beyond Colombia.

In recent weeks, Senator Clinton has taken a hard line against the Chinese government’s human-rights record and its crackdown in Tibet. This month, she called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of this summer’s Beijing Olympics and condemned the Chinese government’s policies on trade issues. Yet Bill Clinton, as a private citizen, has cultivated his own personal ties to China. Between 2001 and 2006, he gave seven speeches there that netted him $1.3 million.

On the campaign trail, Hillary has brushed aside questions about Bill’s business dealings.