Posted on 05/17/2005 11:13:54 AM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON - First lady Laura Bush will make a solo visit to the Middle East this week, aiming to spread a positive message about U.S. intentions in the region.
She will tour local landmarks and programs and will give a speech to the World Economic Forum in Jordan, the White House said Tuesday.
Mrs. Bush leaves Thursday night for the five-day trip to Jordan, Israel and Egypt. White House press secretary Scott McClellan called the trip "an opportunity for Mrs. Bush to reinforce our commitment to promoting freedom and supporting women and girls across the Middle East."
The centerpiece is a speech Saturday before the World Economic Forum in Amman.
Also while in Jordan, Mrs. Bush is to meet with Queen Rania, tour a school supported by U.S. government funds and visit a foundation that helps indigent women find jobs, said Susan Whitson, Mrs. Bush's spokeswoman.
On Mrs. Bush's schedule in Israel, where she arrives Sunday, is a meeting with the wife of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, remarks on the empowerment of women, a stop in the West Bank town of Jericho control of which was handed over to the Palestinians by Israel in March and visits to Jewish and Muslim historical sites.
Mrs. Bush spends Monday and Tuesday in Egypt. She and Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, will visit a girls school, tape a show that is the Egyptian equivalent of "Sesame Street" and go to Egypt's famed Pyramids complex south of Cairo.
She also plans a speech to Egyptian community leaders, and a visit to the ancient port city of Alexandria, a onetime intellectual center on the Mediterranean.
While there, Mrs. Bush is visiting a library that was opened three years ago as a modern version of the ancient library founded about 295 B.C. but burned to the ground in the 4th century. The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, built as part of an attempt to recapture some of Alexandria's intellectual glory, contains about 240,000 books, a planetarium, conference hall, five research institutes, six galleries and three museums.
Mrs. Bush, a former public school teacher and librarian, spends much of her time at home focusing on early childhood education and, more recently, help for juvenile delinquents.
Her travels without her husband about a half a dozen trips in just over four years in the White House, including Moscow, Hungary, the Czech Republic, two stops in Paris and even Afghanistan are important goodwill missions for the United States. Without wading deeply into sensitive topics, Mrs. Bush has become an ambassador for American values before often-skeptical audiences.
She won over many in France during a September 2003 visit in which French President Jacques Chirac famously kissed her hand.
Her image-repair mission in the Middle East may be her most complicated yet.
Anti-American sentiment is strong in the region in the wake of the Iraq war, the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and allegations of mistreatment of terrorism suspects at a U.S. naval prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
There is now new controversy over a Newsweek story later retracted alleging that military investigators found evidence that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo tried to make suspects talk by desecrating the Quran.
ditto
Money down the drain IMHO...
Tut-Tut!
HAH!! Beauty!
America could not ask for a better spokesperson. Laura will represent us well. I am sure she will be safe.
Have a great day!
Yes, it was. :)
How about more Anti-American right here in America?
Don't you believe in faith, hope and change?
Laura Bush
for President
2008
Peace and Blessings to Mrs.Bush for her trip to the Middle East !
The trust building must continue !
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