Hillary Rodham Clinton, the nominee of President-elect Barack Obama to become the new secretary of state, appeared before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today and ran into a challenge over foreign donations to her husband's presidential library.

Clinton, 61, was greeted with bipartisan support for her nomination. But the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Indiana) raised concerns that foreign governments could perceive donations to former president Bill Clinton's library as a way to curry favor with the new secretary of state. He said in opening remarks that he did not expect the issue to be a barrier to Hillary Clinton's confirmation, but he called on the William J. Clinton Foundation to stop accepting foreign donations.

Lugar said donations to the library represent a "complication that will have to be managed with great care and transparency."

In her own opening remarks, Clinton told the committee that, if confirmed, she would take a more practical approach to foreign policy. In a veiled swipe at the outgoing Bush administration, she said she and Obama "believe that foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology."