Bush ends state visit to UK
President George Bush flew home to Washington tonight after a four-day state visit to Britain overshadowed by the terror attacks in Turkey.
The President spent the last day of his trip in the British Prime Minister’s Sedgefield constituency.
The four-hour visit to the North East prompted the biggest security operation the area had ever seen with 1,300 police officers at an estimated cost of £1m (€1.43m).
The President and his wife Laura flew into the constituency aboard his US Marine One helicopter for a meeting at Tony Blair’s home in the village of Trimdon Colliery.
Afterwards the two men and their wives went for a pub lunch at the Dun Cow Inn in Sedgefield where they were met by hundreds of protesters.
Demonstrators held banners and chanted slogans demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister and the President.
Students, Muslim groups, and hardened protest veterans were joined by ordinary local people simply wanting to put across their own views.
Striking a completely different note, Kelly Smith, 39, a Texan who lives in Sedgefield, made a lone stand in support of her President.
Draped in the stars and stripes, she was harangued by other protesters and conducted a heated debate with one of them for television cameras.
“I voted for Mr Bush,” she said.
“I fully support him and I support him because I am an American and I am a loyal conservative American.”
Mr and Mrs Blair, the President and First Lady all chose the same menu.
They had cream of leek and potato soup to start, followed by fish and chips with mushy peas, with lemon crème brulee for pudding.
The President drank non-alcoholic lager while the Prime Minister and the two women accompanied their meals with soft drinks.
After lunch, Mr Blair and Mr Bush arrived with their wives at Sedgefield Community College, a specialist sports school where the President repeated his vow to defeat terror in the wake of the Istanbul bombings.
Mr Bush also disclosed he had spoken to the Turkish leader to discuss the latest outrages and offer US help in tracking down those responsible.
Mr Bush told reporters: “We have got a job to do and that’s to defeat terror.”
Asked if Turkey was a new front in the war on terror, the President replied: “Iraq’s a front, Turkey is a front, anywhere the terrorists think they can strike is a front.”
Mr Blair told reporters the visit had been a “fantastic opportunity” to think about the relationship between Britain and the United States, “to reflect on its history, to assess the strength of it today and use that strength for the benefit of our two countries and the wider world”.
Asked what Britain got out of its special relationship with America, Mr Blair replied: “People sometimes talk about this alliance as if it was some scorecard. It isn’t, it’s an alliance of values, it’s an alliance of common interests and convictions and beliefs.”
In London, Mr Blair’s official spokesman was asked what President Bush’s visit had achieved.
The spokesman said: “It is a mistake to view visits like this on a sort of shopping list basis. That wasn’t how we set out we would view the visit beforehand, and it is not how we view it after the visit.
“What the visit has done first and foremost is to allow us as a country to stand back and recognise the importance of the relationship with the US, not just for historical and cultural reasons but for the values that we share as we face both the opportunities and the challenges of the modern world.”
