Bush heads to Asia for diplomacy, sports

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's agenda in Asia this week is front-loaded with trouble on the continent: nuclear worries, political repression, recovery from natural disaster.

Then comes plenty of sports.

Bush embarked Monday on his last venture as president to the Far East, a trip built around the Olympic Games in Beijing. The president stopped en route at an Alaskan Air Force base to speak to military personnel and get his plane refueled, then was expected to continue through the night to South Korea.

Before leaving the White House, Bush ratified a United Nations treaty intended to curb performance-enhancing drug use in sports. It ensures that the World Anti-Doping Code becomes national law and commits member nations to prevent cross-border trafficking of sporting drugs, support a national drug-testing program and withhold funding from athletes caught cheating.

The UNESCO Convention on Doping in Sport came into force early last year, but has not been ratified by all the countries that pledged to do so. Bush's signature followed Senate approval of the treaty.

"The timing of the United States' ratification, on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, is appropriate," Bush said in a statement. "The Convention makes clear that the use of performance enhancing drugs to gain a competitive advantage undercuts the positive attributes of sport."

With less than six months left in office, Bush is out to show that the United States is engaged in Asia's affairs, and that the economic and security dividends pay off back home.

His enthusiastic plans to attend the Olympics are meant to pay respect to the Chinese people in their moment of glory. Yet as hard as Bush tries to define the games only in the context of sports, there is no escaping the politics of a world event held in a police state.

China, trying to ensure the event is clean of controversy, has only intensified its repression of political dissent, religious expression and press coverage. Bush says he can and will candidly raise concerns about China's human rights record to President Hu Jintao.

Given the long travel and time differences, Bush's agenda doesn't begin in earnest until Wednesday in Seoul, South Korea.

The country is a key partner in the six-country coalition striving to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons. Progress has been stop and start as the world watches to see whether North Korea will come to terms on allowing its nuclear dismantling to be verified.

In Thailand, where a coalition government is enduring rocky times, Bush will spell out his vision for the U.S. presence in the Far East after he leaves office. He will also meet with activists who oppose the repression of neighboring Myanmar's military junta.

That country, also known as Burma, sustained a cyclone in May that killed roughly 80,000 people and put more than 2 million people in need of aid. Bush will be briefed on recovery efforts during his Thailand visit.

The president caps his trip with four days in Beijing, mixing a dash of diplomacy with plenty of unstructured time to watch Olympic sporting events. Bush will be joined by members of his family, including his father, a former president who once served as an envoy to China.

Sixty-three percent in the U.S. said Bush should attend the games' opening ceremonies, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted in late July. Yet in the same survey, 51 percent said they think China is a military threat to the U.S., and 70 percent considered China an economic threat.