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Bush Defends Skipping African Hot Spots

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By JAMES GERSTENZANG, Los Angeles Times

Published: February 17, 2008

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - President Bush on Saturday defended his decision to avoid Africa's most troubled quarters on his trip across the continent's midsection, saying the United States was ready to help countries that make the "right choices."

For Bush, the trip underscores an effort over seven years to shift the way the United States does business with the developing world, tying government aid to anti-corruption campaigns and commercial ventures to free trade commitments.

The president said he wanted to remind future U.S. presidents and Congresses that it was in America's national interest to provide foreign aid, but that rather than "making ourselves feel better ... our money ought to make the people of a particular country feel better about their government."

Bush stopped in Benin, in western Africa, on his way across the continent to Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean, at the start of his six-day trip.

Each stop on the president's so-called "bed nets, not bloodshed" trip, his second to sub-Saharan Africa, is intended to demonstrate the success of Bush administration programs in fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria and encouraging clean government.

However, critics have said the president is side-stepping such trouble spots as Chad, Darfur and Tanzania's neighbor Kenya, where more than 1,000 people have died in post-election political violence in the past six weeks.

The assistant secretary of state for Africa, Jendayi E. Frazer, said the administration had "a very robust strategy of conflict resolution" that had succeeded in the Congo and Liberia. "There is a misperception about Africa in flames," Frazer said.

She said Bush's agenda for discussion here today with Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete probably will include turmoil in Kenya as well as the crisis in Chad, the site of a recent coup attempt, and a discussion of economically ravaged Zimbabwe and other crisis points in Africa.

Bush announced just before he left Washington that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would visit Kenya on Monday to encourage negotiations intended to end the political crisis there. He said Saturday that Rice would deliver "a clear message that there be no violence" to the two sides in conflict over election results.

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