Bush begins last Asian tour
Updated
U-S President George W Bush is on his way to Asia for what's expected to be his last trip to the region before he leaves office. He'll be in Beijing for the Olympic Games and is also planning to visit Thailand and South Korea, where he will discuss the North Korea nuclear issue.
Presenter: Kim Landers
Speakers: Kenneth Lieberthal, professor of political science and China specialist at the University of Michigan; Walter Lohmann director of the Asian studies centre at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
LANDERS: George W. Bush will make history as the first American President to attend an Olympic Games held outside the United States. Apart from the Opening Ceremony, he'll go to a basketball game between the US and China and he's confessed he wants to ride his mountain bike on the Olympic course.
President Bush will be treading a delicate diplomatic tightrope in China. He's rejected repeated calls by activists to boycott the games over China's human rights record. But he says he'll raise human rights issues when he speaks with China's President Hu Jintao.
Walter Lohmann is the director of the Asian studies centre at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He thinks thePresident has been too deferential towards China.
LOHMANN: I think he was too hasty in confirming his plans to go especially amidst the terrible situation in Tibet in March. I think he was too hasty in reassuring the Chinese. I think he could have used it with better leverage. Now that that time is going and there's really no way to use it as leverage at this point, I think he ought to then have considered finding something else to do.
I mean he wouldn't have to be insulting about it. Something comes up, you have to go to Iraq or he has to do something else and he's not able to be there for the Opening Ceremony and not boycotting the Olympics but he's not there celebrating the Chinese rise at a time when their taking a turn really for the worse in terms of political rights in their country.
LANDERS: In Thailand the President will deliver a speech about US relations with Asia. While in South Korea he's expected to tackle thorny trade issues and the international efforts to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Kenneth Lieberthal is a professor of political science and a China specialist at the University of Michigan. He says the President's ninth trip to Asia doesn't necessarily mean he's leaving the US on better terms in the region.
LIEBERTHAL: There's a widespread perception that this is a man who's visited the region occasionally but has never listened to the region seriously. That when it comes to the region his focus has been much to much on his global agenda, especially on terrorism and much too little on regional issues that are of greater concern to the people that he's talking to out there.
So I think in South-East Asia the marks would be fairly low. In places like Malaysia and Indonesia that have large Muslim populations, where President Bush's policy's in Iraq and the surrounding area have been enormously unpopular.
LANDERS: And Professor Lieberthal is critical of the Bush administration's record on North Korea.
LIEBERTHAL: He came into office with the situation in reasonably good shape. North Korean nuclear program highly contained. He then pretty much unilaterally walked away from that situation until he dug himself into a big hole, he's now claiming credit for at least slowing down the process of digging. I don't think that's something he deserves a lot of credit for.
LANDERS: President George W. Bush says his Administration's policies have produced better relations with everyone in the region.
