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Pageantry Gives Way to Politics in Bush Visit
Thu November 20, 2003 03:35 AM ET
By Caren Bohan and Paul Majendie LONDON (Reuters) -
Staunch allies George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will try to iron out their differences over trade and Guantanamo detainees on Thursday as pageantry gives way to politics on the landmark U.S. visit.
Against a backdrop of protest by tens of thousands of demonstrators, they will seek a way forward on Iraq after a war that polarized the world and has turned into a guerrilla insurgency with growing American casualties.
Proclamations of unity abounded on day one of the first ever state visit to Britain by an American President.
After the royal pomp and circumstance of ceremonial salutes and state banquets, they now have to get down to business. They meet for talks and will hold a joint news conference.
As the United States and Britain sought U.N. backing for their agenda to hand over power to Iraqis, Russia criticized U.S. plans for not engaging the United Nations further in the transition process.
Moscow's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, told CNN the proposals left vague the role of the United Nations, which Russia, France and Germany have said must play a critical role in any settlement.
Amid the tightest security ever seen in the British capital, up to 100,000 anti-war protesters plan to take to the streets to express their anger over a war that most Britons opposed.
"We think it will be at least 100,000 today. This will make it the biggest mid-week peace protest in British history," Lindsey German of Stop The War Coalition told Reuters.
"We think it will be peaceful," she added.
The rally is to culminate in Trafalgar Square with the toppling of a giant effigy of Bush in an echo of Saddam Hussein's statue being pulled down in Baghdad.
Bush begins the day by laying a wreath at Westminster Abbey and will talk privately with relatives of the Iraq war dead, though some parents of slain British soldiers have voiced anger at Bush's war policy, saying he has blood on his hands.
BREAKTHROUGH OVER DETAINEES? Officials say the two men may be nearing an understanding over Britons held at a U.S. military jail in Cuba, with a possibility they could face trial in their home country.
Nine Britons are being held as "enemy combatants" at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The issue has sparked discord in the staunch U.S.-Britain alliance in the war on global terrorism.
"With respect to the detainees, I can assure you that the president is very sensitive to the views of the prime minister and the British people," said Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future."
Powell also said Bush will soon decide whether to scrap steel tariffs to comply with a ruling by the World Trade Organization.
The WTO ruled last week that U.S. steel tariffs, imposed by Bush to protect an ailing domestic industry largely concentrated in states key for re-election, violated international laws.
The European Union has threatened to retaliate by mid-December if Washington refuses to back down.
(Additional Reporting by Randall Mikkelsen, Caren Bohan and
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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