U.S. first lady Laura Bush and Afghan President Karzai hold a joint press conference in Kabul June 8.

09 June 2008

(President urges support for Afghanistan's long-term economic development)

Washington -- President Bush sees his final visit to Europe as a time to thank allies that have stood with the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq during some of the most turbulent times of his presidency, but also as an opportunity to foster renewed commitment to vital issues affecting everyone.

"The countries I'm going to have committed troops to Afghanistan, and, of course, [I] want to thank them, and remind them there's a lot of work to be done," Bush said before leaving Washington June 9 for Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the U.S.-European Union Summit, which is being held outside Ljubljana in Brdo.

"I think working together in Afghanistan is going to be an historic achievement; helping a young democracy recover from a society in which women, for example, were treated as unbelievably second-class citizens," he said.

For that reason, Bush intends to make support for Afghanistan a significant issue at the June 10 U.S.-EU Summit and at the International Support Conference for Afghanistan in Paris later in the week.  He said a recent visit to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, by first lady Laura Bush offered him additional insight into the country's needs.

"She's going to go to the Paris Conference, along with Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice, on our behalf to ask nations to contribute to the development of Afghanistan, which will mean they'll be contributing to peace," Bush said in a recent interview.

Afghanistan also is difficult because it is a new democracy emerging from a brutal regime that did little to improve the lives or livelihoods of the Afghan people, the president said.  In 2007, remnants of the ousted Taliban regime threatened an offensive to retake control, but the U.S.-led coalition took the initiative with its own offensive and made progress in improving the overall security of the country, he said.

"The best progress, though, is the advance of better-trained police forces -- and I thank the Italian government for helping -- as well as a better Afghan army, which over time needs to provide the security for the country," Bush said during an interview.

In addition to the U.S.-EU Summit in Brdo, Bush also will hold bilateral meetings in Berlin, Rome, the Vatican, Paris, London and Northern Ireland, says National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.  While in Europe, Bush will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of post-World War II Europe and the Berlin airlift, which helped resolve a serious crisis of the early Cold War during the multinational occupation of Germany following the war.

The trip includes a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the restored medieval St. John's Tower, situated on a hilltop inside the Vatican gardens.  The meeting is unusual because popes normally receive heads of state in their private study in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, spokesman Federico Lombardi told news agencies.