The United States has little leverage over the pivotal players in Lebanon, notably the militant group Hezbollah, whose ministers walked out of the coalition government in Beirut on Wednesday, forcing its collapse.

While Mrs. Clinton applauded signs of progress in Qatar and elsewhere, it was Yemen, with its crippled economy and creeping subculture of Islamic terrorism, that seemed to stick in her mind.

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A day after her visit Tuesday, the Yemeni government announced that for security reasons citizens would need permits to visit foreign embassies, according to the official news agency, Saba. Mrs. Clinton had met opposition figures at the American Embassy in the capital, Sana.

“Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If leaders don’t offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum.”

She added, “Extremist elements, terrorist groups and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there, appealing for allegiance and competing for influence.”

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Mrs. Clinton saved her most scathing remarks for corruption, which she said was corroding Arab economies and making life impossible for foreigners who ran businesses in Arab countries.

“Trying to get a permit,” she said, “you have to pass money through so many different hands. Trying to open up, you have to pay people off. Trying to stay open, you have to pay people off. Trying to export your goods, you have to pay people off. So by the time you pay everybody off, it’s not a very profitable venture.”

Mrs. Clinton’s audience listened silently, though the foreign minister of Bahrain, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, calmly defended his country’s record. Bahrain is much more open than a decade ago, he said, with major growth in advocacy groups and labor unions.

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Even when Mrs. Clinton was pressed on why the Obama administration tolerated Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank — an issue that rankles throughout the Arab world and has contributed to a breakdown of the Middle East peace process — she pushed back.

The United States, she said, gazing pointedly around the room, fails to get a lot of countries to do what it wants. And she said that Americans bore a disproportionate burden of settling the world’s conflicts.

Mrs. Clinton also noted that the United States was the top financial donor to the Palestinian Authority — an implicit rebuke of Arab states, which champion the Palestinian cause but, in the view of critics, do too little to support its efforts to build institutions on the West Bank.