At UN, Bush urges global cooperation

Last address to assembly; Promises swift action on crisis

President Bush sought to reassure world leaders that the US government will take steps to stem the turmoil on Wall Street, which he acknowledged could bring ''devastating effects'' on economies around the world. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

UNITED NATIONS _ President Bush, who told the United Nations in 2002 that it risked making itself irrelevant, said in his farewell address to the world body yesterday that global cooperation is the key to solving the worst of the world's problems.

Bush also sought to reassure world leaders that the US government will take swift action to stem the financial crisis on Wall Street, which he acknowledged could bring "devastating effects" on economies around the world.

Bush used his eighth and final address before the world body to criticize Russia for invading Georgia, and to urge nations around the world to continue to fight tyranny and terrorism. But even as the president took on the dominant geopolitical issues of the day, his address appeared to mark the end of an era.

Analysts said that the president's final UN appearance, coming amid seismic economic shifts on Wall Street, the strain on the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the rise of new power centers such as India and China, signaled not only his own diminishing power over world affairs, but also the waning influence of the United States.

"Ten years ago, the US was the sole superpower and could pretty much demand outcomes on anything that it regarded as important," said Colin Keating, executive director of the Security Council Report, a nonprofit that publishes reports about the UN Security Council. "The world is now a different place."

In the past, said Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations, "a lot of people thought unipolar meant omnipotent, and that the US could do anything it wanted, and do it cheaply and easily. But even the only superpower has to focus and develop a strategy. The world has more problems than the US has solutions. I think the events of the last seven years have driven that lesson home."

Much has changed since Bush gave his first address before the UN general assembly in 2001, a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the time, his administration felt empowered to take drastic, unilateral steps to confront threats, and believed that the world would follow strong US leadership. The difficulties following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Iran's gradual mastery of nuclear technology, North Korea's testing of a nuclear bomb, and the current financial meltdown all highlighted the limits of US power.

Bush's speech yesterday stressed the need to work together to solve the world's problems: "The United Nations and other multilateral organizations are needed more urgently than ever."

Bush offered another tacit acknowledgment of the limits of Washington's power when he said it was "disappointing" that nations had reached an impasse in a global free trade agreement they had been working on for years in Doha, Qatar.

"I urge every nation to seize this opportunity to lift up economies around the world and reach a successful Doha agreement as soon as possible," he said. "The most effective step of all would be an agreement that tears down trade barriers at the global level."

The Doha talks were torpedoed by objections from India and Brazil, and inaction from China, a clear sign that previously marginal powers can now halt a major US foreign policy goal.

"It is no longer the United States and Europe that can set the rules for the world trading system by themselves," said Reginald Dale, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. "You are beginning to see the emergence of this multipolar world."

Despite the relative loss of US influence around the world in recent years, other countries still look to the United States during times of crisis, said Daniel Drezner, associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. He said that during current financial crisis, it is significant that other countries are counting on Washington for a solution and turning to US Treasury bills as the safest asset.

"That is still having full faith and credit in the United States," he said. "We've moving towards a more multipolar, more interdependent world. But I don't think we are there yet."

Yesterday, Bush pledged to act swiftly to solve the US financial crisis, which he acknowledged could create a global disaster.

"I've assured them that the plan laid out by [Treasury]Secretary [Henry] Paulson is a robust plan to deal with a serious problem," Bush told reporters after a meeting with President Ali Asif Zardari of Pakistan, his only scheduled meeting with a foreign leader this week. Bush will also co-host a thank you ceremony with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani for nations that contributed troops to Iraq.

Since he became president in 2001, Bush has had a contentious relationship with the United Nations. He went to war in Iraq after the Security Council rejected the use of force, and appointed John R. Bolton, a longtime critic of the world body, to serve as US ambassador to the UN. Perhaps the lowest point came when UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, who went to Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war there, accused the United States and Britain of bugging his UN office and his New York home. In 2006, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called Bush "the devil" from the podium of the general assembly, hours after Bush had made a speech there.

Bush spent much of his speech yesterday urging foreign leaders to continue to fight dictatorship and extremism, saying, "The nations of this body must challenge tyranny as vigorously as we challenge terror."

He briefly singled out Iran and Syria as states that sponsor terrorism, and said the world needed to enforce sanctions on Iran and North Korea. And he said Russia's invasion of Georgia was "a violation" of the UN Charter, which calls for "equal rights of nations large and small."

But Bush's address yesterday focused more on cooperation than confrontation. He called for reforms that he said would make multilateral institutions more effective, and he praised the UN as an important force for navigating a dangerous world.

"Today the world is engaged in another period of great challenge," he said. "Together, we can build a world that is freer, safer, and better for the generations who follow."