War on terror goes on - Bush

President George Bush today pledged to press on with the war against terrorism.

A day after the US government moved the nation’s threat status to its second-highest level, Bush promised that ”America will not relent in the war against global terror”.

“We will deny the terrorists the sanctuary and bases they need to plan and strike, as we have done in the battle of Afghanistan,” he said in a speech to US Coast Guard Academy graduates. “We will not permit terrorist organisations or states to blackmail the world with weapons of mass destruction, as we have shown in the battle of Iraq.”

But the speech on the banks of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut was markedly different from his address last year to graduating cadets at West Point. Then, he declared the United States would strike pre-emptively against suspected terrorists if necessary to deter attacks on Americans.

Most of his speech today focused on acts of compassion he said Americans and government should carry out.

These goals “will bring greater security to our country,” Bush said. “They are also the moral purpose of American influence. They set an agenda for our government, they give idealistic citizens a great cause to serve.”

Doing so would promote the aspirations of nations that ”build wealth and prosperity for their people in an atmosphere of stability and order, instead of seeking weapons of mass murder and attacking their neighbours,” he said.

Bush rolled out a new initiative – Volunteers for Prosperity.

The programme will send professionals such as doctors, nurses, computer experts and engineers to work with non-governmental groups overseas for weeks or months at a time, said John Bridgeland, director of the White House’s Freedom Corps, which promotes volunteerism.

The programme will target regions Bush has singled out for American aid on Aids, business assistance and hunger.

It will tap thousands of people who have applied to the Peace Corps but who have not been placed, often for lack of openings, and would channel federal money to the non-governmental groups that use the volunteers.

Bush’s aim in the speech was twofold: to persuade other wealthy countries to do more in the global fights against Aids, hunger, poverty and other ills, and build goodwill in the wake of international opposition to the US-led push for war in Iraq.

But just outside the Coast Guard Academy’s gates were reminders of the divisions remaining from the Iraq war. Dozens of protesters awaited the arrival of Bush’s motorcade, one holding a sign that said, “What lies next, Mr Bush?”

The United States has been criticised in the past for having a foreign aid budget that is among the smallest of wealthy countries as a percentage of its gross domestic product, but Bush’s proposed increases to aid levels have muted those complaints somewhat.

The administration has allocated several hundred million dollars in Afghanistan, to build roads, schools and government buildings, to irrigate farmland and to revitalise the country’s devastated farm economy. If political conditions permit, ambitious US development schemes also could be put in place for the Palestinian territories and a post-Saddam Iraq.