Bush is all talk and no action

2005-11-21 14:23

Mongolia - US President George W Bush concluded a week-long trip to Asia on Monday, where he trumpeted shows of unity on Iran and North Korea, and made little concrete progress on trade disputes.

Even before Bush left Washington, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley had made no secret that the president's trip to Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia would yield few tangible benefits.

By the time the visit wrapped up, with Bush becoming the first sitting US president to visit this former land of Genghis Khan, US officials were playing up dialogue, pledges to keep talking, and declarations of common purpose.

"North Korea must abandon (its) nuclear weapons programmes," said Bush in Beijing. "The fact that China and the United States can work on this issue as equal partners is important for the stability of this region and the world."

No escape from Middle East conflict

On Iran, which denies US charges that it is developing nuclear weapons, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said that the United States, China, Russia and the European Union were "all in the same place right now."

Despite a Washington axiom that politics stops at the water's edge, Bush never fully escaped from a festering bitterness over the war in Iraq even as he toured Buddhist temples thousands of kilometres away.

"This is a debate worthy of our country; it's an important debate," he said in Beijing. "Leaving prematurely will have terrible consequences ... And that's not going to happen so long as I'm the president."

Bush came home with at least one US victory: A $4bn Chinese deal with Boeing to buy 70 737 aircraft between 2006 and 2008 as part of a broader arrangement to eventually supply 150 737s.

Mostly positive

But he also suffered one diplomatic embarrassment, when South Korean officials unveiled plans to cut its troop level in Iraq by one third - one day after Bush praised the deployment after talks with President Roh Moo-Hyun.

And Chinese President Hu Jintao rebuffed his appeals for wider religious and political freedom for China's 1.3 billion people while offering only flexibility, not concessions, in a series of trade disputes.

Bush, who sought out US allies' take on Beijing's rising political, economic, and military clout, heard generally reassuring assessments, said senior White House aides.

On another front, the US president brought back renewed pledges from Asian countries at an Asia-Pacific summit in Busan, South Korea, to step up co-operation in the face of deadly bird flu.

- SAPA