Bush urges progress abroad

US President George Bush used his State of the Union address to signal the US' continued support for “the cause of freedom” in Cuba, Myanmar and Belarus, countries the administration has labelled “outposts of tyranny”.

Most of today’s speech was devoted to the war in Iraq and domestic issues, and Bush made no major foreign policy announcements.

He did speak on several familiar international themes, including the need to confront the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea, to stop the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and to encourage Middle East peace and democracy.

“We will continue to speak out for the cause of freedom in places like Cuba, Belarus and Burma (Myanmar) and continue to awaken the conscience of the world to save the people of Darfur,” Bush said in the speech delivered to the full Congress, one of the most-watched political events of the year.

The State of the Union provided a chance for Bush to lay out his plans for the future and to push for democracy in authoritarian countries, but those democracy efforts have been largely overshadowed by fierce debate over US involvement in the war in Iraq.

The speech came as Bush faced his lowest approval ratings in polls and the first Democratic-controlled Congress in 12 years. Democrats wrested control from Bush’s Republican Party in elections last November.

The US often condemns Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who has been accused of quashing dissent, harassing opponents and maintaining power through illegitimate elections.

Myanmar’s ruling junta and Cuban leader Fidel Castro are regularly criticised for human-rights abuses and for imprisoning political opponents.

In his speech, Bush took note of the war in Afghanistan, where “Nato has taken the lead in turning back the Taliban and al-Qaida offensive, the first time the alliance has deployed forces outside the North Atlantic area”.

He also mentioned joint efforts by China, Japan, Russia, the US and South Korea to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. “We are pursuing intensive diplomacy to achieve a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons,” Bush said.

The US had taken up the fight against Aids and malaria in Africa, he said.

“American foreign policy is more than a matter of war and diplomacy. Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: to whom much is given, much is required,” Bush told Congress.

Bush also spoke of the need to encourage democracy in the Middle East and “remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get on to airplanes and come to kill us”, a reference to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US.

“What every terrorist fears most is human freedom, societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience and live by their hopes instead of their resentments,” Bush said.

“The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity, and I say, for the sake of our own security, we must.”

Two years ago, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named six countries as “outposts of tyranny”: Cuba, Myanmar, Belarus, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe.

Bush called Iran, North Korea and Iraq an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address.