The Bush administration will get a close look this week at a new Australian government that has distanced itself from the pro-US policies championed by its conservative predecessor.
But Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were eager to play down their differences during their meeting yesterday, despite the new Australian prime minister's pledge to pull combat troops out of Iraq and his ratification of a climate change pact the US rejects.
In a sign Washington values keeping close ties with Australia, Smith was scheduled to attend US President George W. Bush's State of the Union address yesterday, a US Constitutional requirement under which presidents report to Congress once a year.
Smith is the highest-level official from Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's administration to visit Washington. He was to attend a working lunch hosted by Rice and meet Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US lawmakers yesterday. Australia's trade minister is also visiting Washington this week, and Rudd has said he wants to make his own visit this year.
Former prime minister John Howard celebrated his close friendship with Bush and was one of the last foreign supporters of the US invasion of Iraq still in office. Rudd, though, has pledged to pull his country's 550 combat troops out of Iraq by the middle of this year and his first official act as leader was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the US as the only major industrial country to reject the global warming pact.
Robert Hathaway, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia program, said that Rudd's change in tone is, from the US perspective, a "sign that even America's friends are having growing reservations about this administration and, most particularly, about the war in Iraq."
But Hathaway said he expects to see a "continuity between the Howard and the Rudd governments in terms of their overall relationship with the United States."
Smith said on Friday in New York that strong ties between Australia and the US transcend political changes.
The US State Department emphasized that Australia was a top US partner in a number of efforts, including Iraq, Afghanistan and security cooperation in Asia.
"We've got a pretty broad-based relationship," spokesman Tom Casey told reporters on Friday.
Rudd's November election victory ended Howard's more than 11-year rule. While front-line troops will be withdrawn from Iraq, hundreds of others will stay in supporting roles. Rudd says he will not shrink Australia's 1,000-troop deployment to Afghanistan.
On climate change, Rudd has said he hopes Washington would follow his lead and sign the Kyoto pact. Bush has said the accord would harm the US economy.
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