Mr. McGreevey told the officials, who included members of the development corporation's board and Louis R. Tomson, the agency's president and a close ally of Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, that he intended to assert his authority to influence what is built on the site, according to the people who attended.
Beazley said Australia needed to deploy ministers to Washington to assert Australia's views and to influence the new administration.
Behind the scenes, however, there is debate within the administration as to how aggressively the United States should be moving to assert influence and to court supporters in a power vacuum in which some of the loudest voices so far have been anti-American, and where Iran has shown signs of trying to play an active role.
By and large, the White House has been calling the shots in determining how much aid New York will get and when it will get it, but powerful forces in Congress are beginning to assert themselves and influence the process.
New efforts ought to be made to persuade the sheiks to assert their influence and help keep the peace.
In Washington's regulatory arena, Silicon Valley has also asserted its influence, sometimes to the detriment of labor.
With the U.S. and Europe hobbled by their credit crises, countries such as China and the Gulf States, which have money to lend, will want to assert their influence in smaller states looking for cash.
When Obama got his first chance to nominate someone to the Supreme Court, the NRA broke with precedent to assert its influence over a branch of government putatively independent from partisan politics: the judiciary.
Although Prime Minister Bainimarama has officially retired his military command, the degree to which the Royal Fiji Military Forces will continue to assert their influence in politics - both directly and indirectly - remains an open question.
ALBANY -- Declaring that "government has failed to do what government should be doing," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo moved on Monday to assert his influence over New York State's education policy, appointing a former Citigroup chairman to lead a new commission charged with improving student performance.
