A push for cooperation - on American terms

That President Bush intends to make diplomatic bridge- building a priority of his second term can be seen in his heavy travel schedule over the coming weeks.

But it won't be bridge-building at the expense of what the president perceives as US interests. With critical elections on the horizon in Iraq, the next two months will be about cultivating as much international good will and cooperation as possible - without compromising Mr. Bush's core beliefs.

Friday the president flies to Santiago, Chile, for a three-day trip that includes a summit with Asian and Pacific leaders, a large number of bilateral meetings, a state visit to Chile, and a stop for lunch in Colombia Monday. Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel from Santiago to the Middle East to meet with Israelis and Palestinians to try to take advantage of the window opened by Yasser Arafat's death.

Later this month the president goes to Canada, before a postinauguration trip to Europe for a NATO summit and a visit to Britain. Other European stops might still be added.

The Chile state visit is particularly instructive. Like many of the countries Bush will visit or whose leaders he will meet, Chile opposed the war in Iraq and failed to support the US position in the United Nations Security Council in 2003. But since then both sides have made an effort to overcome that split.

The US has approved a free-trade agreement with Chile, while Chile answered a US request to send peace-keeping troops to troubled Haiti. It also shuffled its diplomatic team at the UN to include an ambassador who is a friend of National Security Adviser and Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice.

That kind of mutual accommodation may serve as an example as Bush approaches the more onerous task of repairing relations with estranged European partners, including Germany, Spain, and France. Still, no one expects Bush, convinced of a mandate to forge ahead even in ways that are unpopular abroad, to pull in America's sails.

"The president would like to mend as many fences as possible, but not at just any cost," says David Lampton, an Asia and foreign-policy expert at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. "I don't see any inclination to change the underlying policies that are giving rise to the disquiet."

An example is North Korea's nuclear-arms program. White House officials discussing Bush's trip to the Asian-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) say the US will stick to demands for resumption of the six-party talks that have involved the US, China, Japan, Russia, and North and South Korea. In a briefing this week the officials played down growing signs of dissatisfaction with the pace and limited scope of those talks, especially from China and South Korea, saying, "We don't see the split."

Mr. Lampton says he sees no indication that the US will now show "any more flexibility with North Korea than we have in the past" - even though that is what some of the six-party partners are looking for. And he says that what is seen as US rigidity is causing problems for some governments in nations where US policies are not popular.

Page: 1 | 2