Blair to address Congress
Tony Blair will travel to Washington today for talks with George Bush and to give a historic address to the US congress.
The Prime Minister will speak to a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate on Capitol Hill and will become one of only four British prime ministers to have done so. He is expected to use the speech to encourage the Middle East peace process and to call for the two UK terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay to be returned to Britain.
He will underline the need for the coalition to ‘finish its job in Iraq and Afghanistan’ and say that a Middle East peace settlement is needed to defeat terrorism.
There are some current tensions between the US and the UK which are in disagreement over the allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, one of the allegations that was used to justify the Iraq war in the first place. The CIA has rejected the reports while the Prime Minister continues to defend the claims.
Mr Blair will only spend a few hours in the United States before flying to the Far East where he will visit Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong over the next six days.
