SEDGEFIELD, England, 22 November 2003 — US President George W. Bush toured British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s rural constituency yesterday as rocket strikes in Baghdad posed a new challenge to the allies’ war on terror. Over 1,000 police threw a ring of steel around Sedgefield, northern England, as Bush’s helicopter touched down in the former mining village of Trimdon, where he drank tea with Blair in his constituency home.
United in their occupation of Iraq, Bush and Blair insist their determination has been strengthened by Thursday’s Istanbul attacks. The president planned to call Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan later yesterday, a White House spokeswoman said.
Around 300 anti-war protesters huddled on the green near Sedgefield’s 13th century parish church in a small echo of Thursday’s mass march in London.
“To defeat terrorism, the US is creating more of the same,” said retired engineer Malcolm Jones, 58. “The bombings in Turkey are the chickens coming home to roost. The US dared to put their military might in the Muslim world and the reprisals are coming.”
But not all voices were raised in opposition. Douglas Harris, 59, carried a banner: “Welcome Mr. Bush. This lot do not speak for me”.
“I am sick to death of a few thousand people claiming to speak for this country —most of this area is proud of Mr. Bush,” said the unemployed pipe-fitter.
Bush and Blair had woken to news of more attacks yesterday, the last day of Bush’s state visit to Britain. Guerrillas fired rockets into Iraq’s Oil Ministry compound and two hotels used by foreign contractors and journalists in the latest strikes on targets linked to the US-led occupation.
Reinforcing the sense of siege, Britain’s top police officer John Stevens said London would remain on high alert for the foreseeable future — and had already faced direct threats in the British capital that his force had foiled.
Two heavily armed helicopter gunships hovered low over the capital as Bush and his wife Laura left Buckingham Palace earlier yesterday, where they had been guests of the queen. The three-day visit, which Bush and Blair must have once hoped would be a celebration of victory in Iraq, has effectively turned into a crisis summit.
Thursday’s attacks in Istanbul on the British Consulate and banking giant HSBC killed 27 people and wounded more than 400.
The blasts coincided with talks between Bush and Blair on their occupation of Iraq and prompted critics to charge the Iraq war had intensified global terrorism by extremists.
“There may be some,” Blair told reporters, “who believe that we, the United States and our allies have brought this on ourselves.” But neither the United States nor the US-British alliance had caused the attacks in Turkey, he said.
Bush bade farewell in the morning to Queen Elizabeth after staying three nights at Buckingham Palace as her guest, then hopped on Air Force One to fly up to Sedgefield.
Security in Sedgefield was tight, as it was in London were Bush arrived Tuesday, with more than 1,300 police officers deployed — about one for every four of the quaint village’s inhabitants.
Beefy US military helicopters have been overflying County Durham all week, and Secret Service bodyguards have secured Myrobella hotel, in an operation said to be costing one million pounds (1.43 million euros, $1.7 million).
Bush, who paid an official visit to London in July 2001, was invited 17 months ago by the queen, on Blair’s advice, to return for a formal state visit. The invitation was issued after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, but well before the Iraq war.
The last US president to visit northeast England was Jimmy Carter, in 1977, when James Callaghan was prime minister and Blair’s “New Labour” revolution was 20 years away. Blair rarely invites VIPs to his home constituency; some of the lucky few include French President Jacques Chirac in 1998 and former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who got the Dun Cow treatment.
County Durham is also the ancestral home of the first US president and founding father George Washington, whose great-grandfather emigrated to Virginia in 1656.
