Bush Meets Mulroney in Canada

George Bush arrived in Canada today on his first presidential trip abroad, meeting with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney but prepared to touch only broadly on the trade and environmental issues concerning each neighbor.

Bush was welcomed at the Ottawa airport by Mulroney and escorted into the capital for his first meeting as a head of state, after saying it was “entirely fitting that (his first trip) be to Canada.”

He was accompanied by his secretary of state, James Baker, and by Baker’s Canadian counterpart, Joe Clark. Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, also was in attendance.

The President arrived having extended a gesture of good will on one of the most senstive U.S.-Canadian concerns, acid rain, by promising a plan soon to reduce the destructive industrial emissions that lead to the problem.

Outlining his spending priorities before a joint session of Congress Thursday night, Bush pledged legislation responding to Canadian demands for a scheduled reduction in U.S. emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides.

“It will include a plan to reduce, by date certain, the emissions which cause acid rain--because the time for study has passed, and the time for action is now,” Bush said in his televised address.

He did not say whether the United States would consider signing a bilateral treaty, which Canada has said is mandatory. One Canadian official, briefing reporters this week on the condition of anonymity, said U.S. development of acid rain legislation would not be a substitute for a treaty.