Bush, Facing Skeptics in Europe, Defends His Iraq Policy

tsfrank

VIENNA, June 21 — President Bush, visiting this Central European city with the aim of promoting trans-Atlantic unity, instead issued an impassioned defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday amid pointed reminders of how far the United States has fallen in the eyes of many Europeans.
\"That's absurd!\" Mr. Bush declared, dismissing a European reporter's suggestion that most Europeans regard the United States as a bigger threat to global stability than North Korea, which has proclaimed it has nuclear arms, and Iran, which is suspected of developing them.

\"Look, people didn't agree with my decision on Iraq, and I understand that,\" he continued, clearly irritated, when another reporter asked about a poll showing European discontent with his policies. \"For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us, it was a change of thinking.\"

Mr. Bush's heated exchange with European reporters — under the glittering chandeliers of the marble-columned throne room in the Hofburg Palace, once the imperial home of the Hapsburgs — followed a meeting of Mr. Bush and leaders of the European Union. They discussed issues that included the nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran, a faltering world trade pact and demands by the Europeans for the United States to close the detainee center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Few, if any, decisions were reached. Mr. Bush described the so-called Doha trade negotiations, which are stalled over the issue of agricultural subsidies, as \"tough work\" and said, as he has before, that he would not close Guantánamo. That issue threatened to overshadow the meeting, so much so that Mr. Bush initiated discussion on it during his session with Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel of Austria, the European Union president, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the European Union's governing body.

\"He didn't wait that we raise the question,\" Mr. Schüssel said at the news conference, standing with Mr. Barroso alongside Mr. Bush. \"He came up and said, 'Look, this is my problem, this is where we are.' \"

The meeting came at a delicate moment for the White House on Iraq. After two weeks of trying to capitalize on the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Bush administration is now faced with the ugly news of the capture, torture and killing of two American soldiers in Iraq. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are engaged in an intense debate over whether to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops.

Against this backdrop, the White House is pursuing an aggressive strategy of embracing the war, believing it is better to confront Americans' unease about Iraq than to let it fester. In a sense, then, the president's defiant stance on Iraq in Europe simply echoed the course he is pursuing at home.

Mr. Bush's arrival here was greeted with largely peaceful protests. His remarks on the war were not very different than what he had said before. But the vigor of his defense, coming at a time when he is trying to repair frayed relations with Europeans and has joined them in trying to negotiate a peaceful end to Iran's nuclear program, underscored how fragile those relations remain.

At one point, Mr. Schüssel stepped in to defend Mr. Bush, recalling his own boyhood in post-World War II Vienna, when the city lay in ruins and Americans offered food and aid. \"Without America, what fate would have Europe?\" he said, adding, \"I think we should be fair from the other side of the Atlantic.\"

Though the official agenda for the European meeting was centered on terrorism, energy and trade, Iran and North Korea loomed large over the talks. On North Korea, Mr. Bush sidestepped a question about how the United States might respond to a missile test. He said simply, \"The North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past, and we expect them to keep their agreements.\"

John R. Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, on Wednesday rejected what appeared to be an offer from North Korea to discuss its preparations for a missile test, Reuters reported. \"It's not a way to produce a conversation,\" he said, \"because if you acquiesce in aberrant behavior you simply encourage the repetition of it, which we're obviously not going to do.\"

Mr. Bolton also told CNN that China should do more to persuade North Korea not to test its missile.

Wednesday's meeting here reflected what Ivo H. Daalder, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, called Mr. Bush's \"delicate minuet\" with Europe.

A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, found that most people surveyed in 10 of 14 foreign countries said the war in Iraq had made the world more dangerous. In France, 36 percent of those surveyed cited American involvement in Iraq as a threat to world peace, as opposed to 31 percent citing Iran and 16 percent citing North Korea.

Despite the numbers, analysts say, tensions have been easing since Mr. Bush's last trip to Europe, in 2005. Now, as he emphasizes a peaceful resolution in Iran, foreign policy experts say he has improved his credibility with European governments, if not the European people.

\"I don't think Europeans are ever going to learn to love George Bush,\" said Mark Leonard, director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform, a research institution in London. But, he said, \"I think there has been a remarkable honeymoon between governments.\"

That honeymoon does not extend to the local press. On Tuesday, anticipating Mr. Bush's arrival, an Austrian commentator, Hans Rauscher, offered a brutal assessment of Mr. Bush in the newspaper Der Standard, calling him \"probably the worst president of the past 100 years.\"

But Mr. Bush fought back, citing American aid to Africa to fight the AIDS epidemic and his declaration of genocide in Darfur as examples of American compassion.

\"I will do my best to explain our foreign policy,\" he said. \"On the one hand, it's tough when it needs to be; on the other hand, it's compassionate. And we'll let the polls figure out — people can say what they want to say.\"