Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that neither would need a diary entry to remember. Just 12 hours before Beijing kicked off the 2008 Summer Olympics, father introduced son at a dedication ceremony for a sprawling new U.S. embassy complex. The Beijing Games was the last stop on President Bush's final tour of East Asia before leaving office in January. And while the trip offered opportunities to marvel at China's accomplishments, Bush was focused not on past triumphs, but on present dangers. In Seoul, he met with President Lee Myung Bak to plot the next phase in North Korea's slow-motion nuclear disarmament...
...Bush 43 is on the last stop of what is his last ever tour of east Asia as President. And while, at the embassy on Friday morning, he gracefully acknowledged history's extraordinary progress - the Beijing of 2008 bears no resemblance to the dusty, impoverished capital he visited 33 years ago - the trip is neither a Bush family exercise in nostalgia, nor a farewell tour for a Chief Executive with just months left in office. For Bush, it is about an array of present dangers - Iran above...
...Seoul, Bush had met with President Lee Myung-bak to plot what he hopes will be the next phase in North Korea's slow motion nuclear disarmament. In Bangkok, he dutifully praised southeast Asia's economic progress, then slammed both the Rangoon regime's human rights record and that of his soon to be hosts, the Chinese. The U.S., he said, has "deep concerns over religious freedom and human rights. The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings...
...weeks leading up to his Asia trip, the Bush administration went farther than ever in trying to engage Iran. The State Department backed off on its insistence that one-on-one negotiations with Iran are off the table until Tehran suspends its enrichment, and the undersecretary of state for political affairs, William Burns, went to Geneva to meet with Iranian officials. He got nothing to show for it, and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, explained why. "Taking one step back against the arrogant powers will lead them to take one step forward," he said...
When the Beijing Olympics began on August 8, 2008 at 8:00 p.m - 8 being an auspicious number in Chinese - with a brilliant orgy of 35,000 fireworks and the thunderous percussion of 2,000 ancient drums, there was no question that the East now mattered. Asia has hosted the Summer Games twice before - Tokyo '64 and Seoul '88 - but this Olympics represents the aspirations of one-fifth of humanity. For 60 minutes, more than 15,000 Chinese performers marched and twirled and beamed with such flawless precision that it was as if the previous five millennia of Chinese history...