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WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush left on Monday on a three-nation trip to Asia during which he will attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony clouded by concerns over China's human rights record.
Bush was headed first to South Korea and Thailand, and will go to the Olympics' opening ceremony on August 8 after rejecting repeated calls by activists to boycott the Games over human rights concerns.
On the way to Seoul, he will transit at Eielson military base in Alaska to address US troops, thanking them for their service to the country.
The president's attendance at the Olympics will test his vow to keep politics out of the Games.
"I made a decision not to politicise the Games; this is for athletics," Bush, who will be in China August 7-11, said on Wednesday. "There's plenty of time for politics, and I'm confident I'll have time for politics."
A sports fanatic, Bush will attend a basketball game between the star-studded US team and China. His schedule is unusually flexible, apparently to allow him to follow competitions.
But with the world's eyes watching the Olympics, human rights groups and US lawmakers hope he will use the event to push Chinese leaders to give more freedom to their people.
There was international condemnation last week over media censorship during the games.
Bush has insisted that he raises the human rights question every time he speaks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and the two are scheduled to hold talks.
During his visit to Beijing, he plans to make public remarks on religious freedom after attending a Christian service. The administration has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting with dissidents in China.
Bush, who has acknowledged that US-Chinese relations are complex, treads a delicate diplomatic rope with the Asian powerhouse.
The United States is increasingly dependent on China to reduce a 21 billion dollar bilateral trade deficit, take down international trade barriers, convince North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and combat global warming.
And even a visit to South Korea, where he will be on Tuesday and Wednesday, has not escaped controversy.
The South Korean government of President Lee Myung-Bak had been facing mass protests over its decision to lift an embargo on US beef imports introduced in 2003 in the wake of cases of mad cow disease in the United States.
To make matters worse, a small US government organisation, the Board on Geographic Names, recently changed its classification of a chain of islets disputed by Seoul and Tokyo from a territory of South Korea to "undesignated sovereignty."
At Bush's instruction, the board last week reversed its decision and reclassified the islets as a territory of South Korea.
Dennis Wilder, a top Bush aide on Asian affairs, said American beef was popular in South Korea and he believed "this issue will recede more and more" as more US beef enters the South Korean market.
Wilder added that the island issue "certainly didn't enhance the atmosphere for the visit," but the president had demonstrated leadership on this matter.
"One of the things I think people forget in the midst of some of this is how firmly and strongly the South Korean people believe in the American relationship," the White House aide pointed out.
The lifting of the beef embargo has removed one of the obstacles on the way toward ratification by the US Congress of a free trade agreement with Seoul, but the issue was far from resolved and Bush stopped short on giving firm assurances on the matter.
"I've told the president I make no promises, except I'll push as hard as I possibly can to get it done before I leave the presidency," Bush told South Korean television in an interview.
The denuclearisation of North Korea, which agreed to disarm in a six-nation pact, will figure prominently during Bush's visit to South Korea.
His ninth trip to Asia will coincide with the final days of a key date in efforts to disarm Pyongyang.
Bush announced in June his intention to remove North Korea from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism in 45 days, a timeline that ends August 11.
But the administration said the communist regime could not be removed from the list unless it agrees to a comprehensive protocol verifying its atomic programme.
US officials insisted August 11 was not a deadline for Pyongyang to adopt the protocol. - AFP/so/de
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