Blair Gains Little in U.S. Visit

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged Tuesday to continue working together to combat food shortages and disease in Africa, even as they failed to agree on how to carry out what Blair called “a real and common desire to help that troubled continent.”

Although the two leaders said the United States and Britain were nearing an agreement on granting full debt relief to some of the continent’s most indebted nations, Bush did not budge from his opposition to Blair’s proposal that the United States and other major industrialized nations double their foreign aid to Africa to about $80 billion by 2010.

Aware of Bush’s position, the British prime minister told the Financial Times a day earlier that he would not bring up the matter during their meeting.

On another Blair initiative -- to impose tough restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere -- Bush also parted company with his guest, saying that the United States needed to know more about global warming before it could more effectively deal with the phenomenon.

And Bush flatly rejected the allegations in the so-called Downing Street memo, written in July 2002 by a Blair foreign policy aide. The document alleged that the White House was fixing its intelligence and facts about the threat posed by then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to justify an invasion to oust him.

“There’s nothing farther from the truth,” Bush said during a brief news conference with Blair in the East Room of the White House. The president suggested that the memo, first reported in the Sunday Times of London and the topic of much discussion on the Internet, had been dropped into the middle of Britain’s recent parliamentary elections in an effort to damage Blair and his Labor Party.

Blair refuted the memo as well. “No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all,” he said. At the time of the memo, he said, “we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict.”

Bush sounded defensive more than once during the session with reporters.

The president rejected the suggestion that the United States lagged behind most other industrialized nations in the percentage of gross national product that it contributes in aid to Africa -- 0.16%. Other developed countries give an average of 0.24%.

“Now, in terms of whether or not the formula that you commented upon are the right way to analyze the United States commitment to her, I don’t think it is,” he said. “... There’s a lot of things that aren’t counted in our desire to spread compassion. But our country is -- has taken the lead in Africa, and we’ll stay there. It’s the right thing to do. It’s important to help Africa get on her feet.”

Bush said his administration had tripled aid to sub-Saharan Africa, to about $3.2 billion, accounting for nearly a quarter of all aid to that region.

“I want you to focus on what we have done, for starters.... What I like to say is, my administration actually does what we say we’re going to do -- and we have,” he said.

“When I say we’re going to make a commitment to triple aid in Africa, I meant it, and we did. When I said we’re going to lead an initiative, an HIV/AIDS initiative, the likes of which the world has never seen before on the continent of Africa, we have done that, and we’re following through. And so when I say we’re going to do more, I think you can take that to the bank, as we say, because of what we have done.”

Bush also announced a $674-million U.S. contribution to food aid and other humanitarian efforts, largely for the Horn of Africa. The funds have been appropriated by Congress and would be separate from any new contributions the United States might make next month at the Group of 8 meeting of industrialized nations in Gleneagles, Scotland, said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Bush and Blair spoke of the importance of good governance on the part of recipient nations in Africa.

“Nobody wants to give money to a country that’s corrupt, where leaders take money and put it in their pocket,” the president said. “We’re not really interested in supporting a government that doesn’t have open economies and open markets.”

On climate change, Blair acknowledged that “everyone knows there are different perspectives on this issue.” But he said he was encouraged by “a common commitment and desire to tackle the challenges.”

Bush conceded that greenhouse emissions posed “a serious long-term issue that needs to be dealt with.” And while calling for additional scientific research, he also stated that his administration “isn’t waiting around ... we’re acting.”

He cited his support for ways to “diversify away from a hydrocarbon society,” such as by promoting hydrogen fuel-cell technology, clean coal, biodiesel fuel and “clean nuke.”

Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy center in Washington, said Bush’s “defensiveness in his offensive kind of way” during the news conference should have surprised no one. Most of the issues that Blair brought with him -- and raised during their joint appearance -- “clearly were not what [Bush] wants to talk about,” Daalder said.

“On one hand, he’s trying to put a good face on the fact that the prime minister of Great Britain had stood by the president of the United States since at least Sept. 11, 2001, shoulder-to-shoulder, and came here to ask him to do more on some issues that he cares a great deal about, and Bush basically said sorry, he’s not going to do it,” Daalder said.

He added that Blair should take solace in the fact that, although he may have gone home largely empty-handed, he had won a moral victory simply by having come to Washington and pressed his agenda in a very public way.