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Wh official calls philippines al qaeda hell { October 15 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/asia/15PREX.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/asia/15PREX.html
October 15, 2003
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
Fast Lane for President: 6 Nations, 6 Days, Safely
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — When George W. Bush arrives in Manila for a state visit on Saturday, there will be no time to luxuriate in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's old suite at the sumptuous Manila Hotel, the usual overnight spot for presidents.
This visit will have no overnight. It lasts exactly eight hours, because the Secret Service will not permit Mr. Bush to stay past dinner in a country whose army officers are sometimes of dubious loyalty and where terrorist groups still strike with audacity.
But the Philippine government is not complaining. Indonesia gets the presidential presence for only three hours. It is all part of what one official calls "the trip from Al Qaeda hell."
Even for a president who does not like to linger — he once toured the square outside the Kremlin in 20 minutes — this will be an extreme version of Mr. Bush's brand of high-speed tourism.
The visits, before and after a three-night stay in Bangkok for the annual economic summit meeting of Asian leaders, will reward two of Mr. Bush's most important allies at a time when terror groups still have a potent presence in Asia. The enforced haste shows how much Southeast Asia has changed from the region Mr. Bush's predecessors once traveled in so freely.
For 15 years, when American presidents visited Asia, it was to celebrate the region's dynamism and to marvel at the semiconductor factories and auto plants that sprang up like bamboo before the Asian economic crisis.
But the politics of globalization, too Clinton-sounding to be a favorite subject in the Bush White House even before terrorism took center stage,
seems to be the furthest thing from Mr. Bush's mind.
Instead of factories, Mr. Bush is visiting Thai troops who recently returned from Afghanistan.
When Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, briefed reporters about the trip on Tuesday, she described no new economic programs with Asian allies and never mentioned the trade deficits with China or a decade of stagnation in Japan. Mr. Bush, she said, was intent on putting "security at the heart" of the Asian talks.
"Economics and security are inextricably linked," she argued, citing what happened to tourism on Bali after last year's bombing, in which 200 people were killed.
The degree to which the security situation has deteriorated is evident to anyone who glances over the president's public schedule and compares it to how presidents have toured the same places in years past.
In November 1996, President Clinton spent a leisurely few nights in the MacArthur Suite, with its commanding view of Corregidor, the site of the general's last stand in defending the Philippines.
And in 1986, when Indonesia was under the iron rule of Suharto, President Reagan soaked in the sun on Bali, the resort island where Mr. Bush's three-hour meeting with President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Islamic leaders will take place.
The White House will not say for certain where exactly the meeting is taking place — at a resort, a government guest house or near the airport.
One senior official said the dispute with the Secret Service over going to Indonesia at all got so heated "that the whole thing had to end up in the Oval Office, with the president declaring that we are going."
All this has put Indonesia and the Philippines in the same heightened security category as Colombia, where the threat of attack by the drug lords forced the first President Bush to visit for only a day in 1990.
Thus Mr. Bush, not an ever-curious tourist, will see less than usual.
After a day and a half in California to raise campaign cash and embrace Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Bush will hit six countries in six days.
He arrives in Tokyo for what Ms. Rice today called "a layover" rather than a visit, though he is expected to eat at a restaurant with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. No doubt his host already knows what Mr. Bush told visitors today: He does not eat sushi.
There are hints that Japan may contribute several billion dollars to rebuilding Iraq, but Ms. Rice said on Tuesday that the president is not going with his hand out.
He would not have it out for long; he goes next to the Philippines to address a joint meeting of Congress there, the first president to do so since Dwight D. Eisenhower visited four decades ago.
Then it is on to a state dinner at Malacanang Palace with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who could receive a boost from a Bush visit.
He will be gone by sundown, off to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit talks and another state visit. He will sleep in Bangkok three nights, but that, too, worries security officials.
Two months ago, when Thai and American officials arrested Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian terror leader known as Hambali, he apparently disclosed plans to blow up two American-owned hotels in Bangkok during the meeting.
The threat has been taken seriously, as have reports that shoulder-fired missiles may have been smuggled into Thailand.
Hambali was the main link between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant Islamic organization that wants to turn Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, into an Islamic state.
The number of his followers who remain at large is still a mystery. But they are the primary reason that Indonesia was initially scratched from the president's schedule, before some aides who consider bolstering President Megawati a top priority made their case.
"We need to show her support," one of the aides said. "We're just going to show her that support very quickly."
When Mr. Bush leaves Thailand, he will spend the night in Singapore, dining with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and using it as a staging area for visiting Bali.
Then it is on to Australia, which provided special forces for the early days of the Iraq war, and where Prime Minister John Howard has made the alliance with Washington a key element of his tenure.
Past presidents have taken in the restaurants of Sydney or the wonders of the country. Not Mr. Bush: He cut the trip down to a visit to Canberra, a capital that is a bit like Ottawa but not quite as vibrant.
He will be there for just 21 hours, on his way to a day of fundraising in Honolulu, perhaps the only time he will make it to Hawaii between now and the election.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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