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Bush striking new tone in UN address
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-18 15:41
US President George W. Bush opens a new effort next week to focus attention
on the compassionate side of his foreign policy, promising a vision for
``building a better world.''
In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush previewed the speech he's to
deliver to the UN General Assembly in New York. Tuesday's speech will strike a
different tone from his address to the world body last year, which emphasized
anti-terrorism and postwar Iraq.
``This week, I will speak in New York to the United Nations General Assembly,
and I will talk about the great possibilities of our time to improve health,
expand prosperity and extend freedom in our world,'' Bush said in the broadcast,
aired as he spent the weekend at his family's seaside home.
He said he will not back down in confronting terrorists, but he blended that
message with talk of humanitarian causes.
``Our country is determined to spread hope and economic progress and freedom
as the alternatives to hatreds, resentments and terrorist violence,'' the U.S.
president said. ``In hopeful societies, men and women are far less likely to
embrace murderous ideologies.''
Bush offered several of his long-standing goals as examples. They included
combating AIDS in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia with a proposed US$15 billion
in US spending, helping lift up poor nations by attaching strings to foreign aid
and lending a hand in education and farming in Africa.
He also dangled, without elaborating, ``some additional proposals to expand
prosperity and accelerate the march of freedom in our world.''
``Never in the history of the United Nations have we faced so many
opportunities to create a safer world by building a better world,'' Bush said.
``For the sake of our common security, and for the sake of our common values,
the international community must rise to this historic moment. And the United
States is prepared to lead.''
Bush's message is aimed at twin audiences. He is seeking to demonstrate to
American voters and to skeptics overseas that he has a hopeful foreign-policy
agenda that extends beyond terrorism and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Bush's 2003 speech at the United Nations came six months after he launched
the Iraq war, and the president devoted almost all of his address to terrorism
and Iraq.
Aides billed the radio address as a preview of this year's UN speech, and it
mentioned the words ``Iraq'' or ``Iraqi'' just three times.
Bush will play host to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at the White House
next week after two days of heavy diplomacy at the United Nations. Allawi also
will address Congress.
At a time of surging violence in Iraq, Allawi can help Bush put a human face
on the American effort there.
``I'm looking forward to the American people hearing him,'' Bush said at a
rally Friday in Charlotte, North Carolina. ``It's important that we hear from
someone there on the ground who believes that people want to be free, (who)
believes that the people of Iraq really want to be free.''
Bush will sit down with Allawi in the White House on Thursday, to be followed
by questions from reporters. Bush has not answered questions publicly since he
talked to reporters at his Texas ranch on Aug. 23.
At the annual General Assembly opening session, Bush meets Tuesday with
Allawi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. On
Wednesday, he confers with President Pervez Musharraf of
Pakistan.
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