In an interview for a high-profile magazine cover story just hitting newsstands, President Clinton offers praise for several foreign policy initiatives undertaken by President Bush.

Speaking with Condé Nast Traveler, Mr. Clinton lauds Mr. Bush mostly for decisions that involved overruling hard-liners in his administration.

“He has done three things that I think the world generally approved of: restoring cooperation with the Latin American countries, making a diplomatic agreement with North Korea instead of continuing to have a frigid standoff, and sending Americans to the conference to discuss the future of Iraq with the Iranians and the Syrians,” Mr. Clinton said. “Those are, all three, things that signify we’re trying to do better in the world.”

The former president said more inflexible positions the Bush administration took earlier on those and other issues were the understandable product of the trauma America incurred on September 11, 2001. “It took us a couple of years to regain our bearings, and I think we have now,” he said. “I think that we’re getting our balance back.”

Mr. Clinton also gave Mr. Bush credit for pressing for an end to the genocide in Darfur. “I think the fact that he’s pushing really, really hard through the diplomatic channels on Darfur is a plus. People see that we’re pushing harder than some of the other countries are to try to get an acceptable UN force in there that will save more lives,” he said.

While a photo of Mr. Clinton on a beach in Thailand graces Traveler’s three-page, fold-out September cover, the observations about Mr. Bush did not make it into the magazine’s lengthy story about the former president’s charitable work overseas. The comments appear only on the travel glossy’s Web site, which offers a transcript of an interview the article’s author, Patricia Storace, conducted at Mr. Clinton’s Harlem office. No date is given, but it seems to have been in March or April, based on references in the exchange.

While the magazine’s release could boost Senator Clinton’s presidential prospects by putting her well-liked husband’s familiar face and a flattering article on the coffee tables of upscale Traveler readers across America, the timing appears to be linked to events in Mr. Clinton’s philanthropic sphere. The annual gathering of leaders involved in his charitable effort, the Clinton Global Initiative, takes place in New York next month. A new book from the former president, “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World,” is set for release on September 4.

As he stressed points of agreement with Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton also delved into the politically dicey area of emergency food assistance abroad, challenging the long-standing requirement that such food be purchased and shipped from America. Mr. Bush “wants to say 25% of the aid can be given by food bought in the next nearest country, which helps farmers in Africa and elsewhere where there’s hunger, and you get more food and you get it delivered more quickly,” the former president said. “It’s not a big thing, maybe, compared to Iraq, but it shows that we’re pushing.”

The proposal has gotten a chilly reception on Capitol Hill and from American farming and shipping interests. The change in aid policy “doesn’t even have enough support in my own party yet — but I’m for it,” Mr. Clinton said.

Lobbyists who track the issue of foreign sourcing of food aid said they were unaware of any statement on the subject from the major candidates for president. In June, Mrs. Clinton released a detailed list of priorities for the farm bill being debated in Congress. She made no mention of Mr. Bush’s proposal to source some food aid abroad, though she did express support for a program that provides meals to poor school-age children overseas.

And while Wal-Mart appears to be a dirty word to many Democrats, in the interview, Mr. Clinton cheered the firm’s environmental efforts as good business. He also called the firm “conservative” and noted that it is “not unionized.”

Readers who think Mr. Clinton looks a tad pallid compared to the turquoise Phuket waters on Traveler’s cover are on to something. He fell ill the night before the photo shoot last December, during a charity trip through Asia. “He was rather white when he stepped in front of the camera, but he was a very good sport,” the photographer, Jeff Riedel, said. Mr. Riedel blamed food poisoning, though Ms. Storace, the writer, said it was a stomach flu that traveled through the ex-president’s delegation.