Bush visits Nazi death camps

George W Bush toured former Nazi death camps today and urged the world never to forget the Holocaust victims.

“Mankind must come together to fight such dark impulses,” he said.

The US President and his wife Laura visited Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps where 1.5 million Jews and tens of thousands of other victims were killed during the Second World War.

“The sites are a sobering reminder of the power of evil and the need for people to resist evil,” Bush told reporters afterwards.

Later, he was outlining his vision for a revitalised trans-Atlantic alliance that will emphasise humanitarian as well as military cooperation.

“He will talk about the great challenges that the international community faces,” including poverty, hunger and Aids, said US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

At Auschwitz, Bush was solemn as he emerged from a tour of the gas chamber and crematorium into bright sunshine outside. Mrs Bush placed a long-stemmed rose on a cast-iron gurney used for pushing bodies into the ovens.

The President also participated in a wreath-laying at a brick wall in a row of prison barracks, where thousands of prisoners were executed. Another wreath-laying ceremony at Birkenau took place at the end of the railhead that once brought prisoners into the death camp.

Bush was only the second American president to visit Auschwitz, about 50 miles from the Polish city of Krakow. President Gerald Ford visited in 1975, while Poland was under communist rule.

Bush arrived in Poland, the first stop on his European tour, last night. He was welcomed at the airport by a Polish military cordon, the soldiers wearing feathered caps and olive green capes.

Later today he was meeting Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a staunch supporter of the Iraq war. Poland sent 200 troops to fight in the war and has pledged 2,000 peacekeepers. It is responsible for maintaining stability in one of three postwar Iraq sectors.

Poland is among the administration’s “new Europe” allies. That Bush chose Krakow as the site for his speech on future US-European relations, rather than some other European locale, had clear symbolic importance.

Bush was also stopping in St Petersburg, Russia, to meet President Vladimir Putin and participate in celebrations honouring that city’s 300th anniversary. Tomorrow, he heads to Evian, France, for a Group of Eight summit of world economic powers.

Early next week, Bush will meet in Arab leaders in Egypt, then is scheduled to preside over a three-way summit in Jordan with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

Powell said such a three-way summit would represent an important start toward adopting the US-backed peace plan that envisions a Palestinian state by 2005.