| |
|
quote:
Bush and Blair Trade Praise at White House Love Fest
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — No one ever said they would be soulmates, and they aren't. But today President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain stood side by side at the White House as unwavering allies joined by war, national self-interest and what their aides say is a growing personal chemistry.
Although Mr. Blair is not nearly as close to Mr. Bush as he was to Bill Clinton, he has told his advisers — just as Mr. Clinton has told friends — that they are wrong to underestimate the president.
"We've got no better friend in the world than Great Britain," Mr. Bush said this evening in a chummy news conference with Mr. Blair that offered no new revelations in the fight against terrorism but projected a powerful image of a united America and Britain. "I've got no better person I would like to talk to about our mutual concerns than Tony Blair."
Mr. Blair quickly returned the compliment, thanking Mr. Bush "once again for his leadership and his strength at this time."
The two stood behind identical lecterns, their hands clasped similarly in front of them, smiling or nodding agreeably at the other's words. At one point Mr. Blair stepped in to finish a sentence of banter for Mr. Bush, who had told reporters that they were limited to asking one question of either leader.
When a correspondent asked the president if the limit was an executive order — a reference to an order last week restricting the release of presidential papers — Mr. Bush began laughing as Mr. Blair cheerily chimed in: "it looks like it."
The prime minister had no discernible reaction when Mr. Bush suddenly said that the war in Afghanistan was "not one of these Kodak moments."
Mr. Blair, who has met with 54 world leaders since Sept. 11 and has been operating as a kind of supra- American secretary of state, arrived in Washington this afternoon for barely six hours of talks and dinner with Mr. Bush.
He briefed the president on his meetings with leaders in the Middle East and Europe. The two also discussed military strategy in Afghanistan, relief aid and postwar reconstruction, Mr. Blair said.
******
Advisers to both men said that they now talked several times a week, and that their aides talked daily. "They've always talked quite a bit," a senior administration official said last night of the two leaders, "but not at this level of intensity. You're in a war together."
****
The American view of Mr. Blair has not always been shared in Britain, where the prime minister is described in some newspapers and commentary as "Bush's poodle," who is doing much of the hard work of coalition building and diplomacy for the United States.
It was Mr. Blair, not Mr. Bush, who released the white paper detailing the case against Osama bin Laden, and it is Mr. Blair who has traveled far more extensively since Sept. 11 — 40,000 miles — than Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. It was also Mr. Blair who had dinner with Mr. Bush and then rode with him up to Capitol Hill before the president's address on Sept. 21 to a joint session of Congress. Perhaps most important, it was Mr. Blair who was the first ally to condemn the Sept. 11 attacks, saying emotionally that Britain stood "full square alongside the U.S." and then offering support without conditions.
That support, British and American officials say, ensured that Mr. Blair would have an important voice in Mr. Bush's White House. "He right away picked up history and ran with it," said Raymond G. H. Seitz, the United States ambassador in London from 1991 to 1994, who is now an executive at Lehman Brothers in London. "There's something in the American psyche that says, `Well, if the British are there, it's O.K.' It's good to have a little company."
****
From today's
New York Times. The picture is priceless. |
|
|
