Global Policy Forum

By Karen DeYoung

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien came to Washington yesterday hoping to enlist President Bush's help in resolving a U.S.-Canada trade dispute and to consult Bush on the next summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, to be hosted by Canada in June, that Chretien expects to focus more on Africa and development aid than on terrorism.

He clearly succeeded on the trade goal. In a Rose Garden appearance with Chretien after their meeting, Bush said that "we are making very good progress" on negotiations over U.S.-proposed duties on softwood lumber imports that Canada has labeled as unfair. "As a result of the prime minister's insistence and my assistance," Bush said, "we are working overtime to achieve an agreement" by a March 21 deadline.

The results on the second objective were less clear. Chretien said in an interview just before the White House meeting that the summit over which he will preside would be a major topic of his talks with Bush. "I want it to be concentrated on limited issues," Chretien said, leading with Africa and the usual G-8 economic concerns, with terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East also on the agenda.

Chretien, who used to play golf with President Bill Clinton, said his relationship with Bush is good and "I will never tell any foreign leader what to do." But his comments reflected a widening gap between the United States, where administration attention has been highly concentrated on the war Bush declared after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and most of the rest of the world, which has resumed its engagement with other issues even as it continues to express anti-terrorist support and concern.

Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden that the two "had a wide-ranging discussion on a lot of topics," including U.S. gratitude for Canada's "steadfast support in our war against terror." Bush said they also talked about the U.S.-Canadian border, a subset of the terrorism issue, trade and energy. He did not mention Africa or the summit.

It was left to Chretien, once Bush had finished commenting that 1,000 Canadian troops deployed in Afghanistan had "performed brilliantly," to say, "We spoke about Africa." He congratulated Bush on a speech earlier in the day promising an increase in U.S. development aid, "because as you know . . . at the G-8, the main topic will be Africa."

A number of foreign leaders have recently expressed public and private frustration that the administration seems unable to sustain concentration on any foreign policy issue unrelated to the anti-terrorism effort. Some, including a group of Latin American foreign ministers who arrived in February pleading for the administration to fight in Congress for a promised trade agreement, have tried to include their concerns under the terrorist umbrella.

The ministers from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia argued that lack of trade has led to a lack of jobs and popular dissatisfaction, which in turn could undermine democracy and encourage the growth of terrorist organizations in their region.

European leaders grumbled that Bush not only concentrated too much on terrorism in his January State of the Union speech, but also failed to mention the contributions any of them had made to the war.

At a business leaders' lunch last weekend in Kenya, a Nairobi executive who had just returned from a trip to Washington and New York marveled that both the U.S. government and the media seemed obsessed with terrorism. "They talked so much about it that I started to be afraid for my own security there," said Wilfred D. Koboro of Nation Media Group Ltd.

In his speech announcing new U.S. development aid at the Inter-American Development Bank yesterday, Bush said the United States has a historical "calling" to both "wage war . . . to keep the world safe from terror" and "work to make the world a better place for all its citizens."

Chretien said in the interview that he was hoping to visit all the G-8 leaders before the summit. Although progress on a G-8 partnership program with Africa was a leading agenda item at the most recent G-8 meeting last fall in Genoa, Italy, it was quickly overtaken by terrorism.

"I want to have a response to the partnership by the G-8 in Canada that will be positive," Chretien said. He said that he supported Bush's call for foreign aid to be directed toward governments that can demonstrate "good governance, rule of law, social development and human rights," but that each aid donor should develop its own system of how to distribute assistance.

On other issues, Chretien said an initial report from a Commonwealth team monitoring elections in Zimbabwe was "very negative" and noted that Canada had cut off most of its aid to President Robert Mugabe's government last May after several Canadian citizens, including the high commissioner, or ambassador, were roughed up.

In a meeting with reporters after a quick dinner with Bush yesterday, Chretien was asked about a new Canadian newspaper report that some White House staffers referred to the long-serving, 68-year-old prime minister as "Dino," short for dinosaur. The reference, he said, was to "Dean-o," as in "Dean o' the G-8."

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