Tour diary: Bush in Europe

8 May

TURBULENCE

There's the diplomatic car language. And then there's the undiplomatic plane language.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have let George Bush drive his vintage 1956 Volga to dinner tonight in a "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" moment (unlike President Bush, we don't actually know what's on Putin's i-Pod - or even if he has one - but my hunch is that he's a Beatles fan, like most Russians) but up in the skies it was a different, less friendly, story.

Just before boarding the plane in Maastricht, we'd learned that the Russians weren't going to allow the White House Press Pool to swan through passport control, as they usually do.

"Silly games", I heard one of the White House team muttering.

I was seriously upset. For someone who's spent over 20 years standing in long passport queues at Moscow's gloomy Sheremetyevo airport, that was going to be one of the highlights of my trip.

And then, I swear that - at the moment we entered Russian air space - we encountered our first serious turbulence on this trip. A coincidence? Or a sign of the true nature of US-Russian relations?

Ok, you're not convinced. You assume that I've succumbed to those two classic Russian diseases: a love of conspiracy theories and a tendency to be superstitious.

Well how about this? Just as our plane touched down and we were loaded onto buses, another plane took off - effectively cutting our party in half and delaying our departure by a good half an hour. Who was on board? None other than President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, the man who runs what President Bush described yesterday as "Europe's last dictatorship."

Oh - and when we finally got to the shiny Vnukovo airport terminal with our suitcases, we had one up escalator to negotiate.

Have a guess whether or not it was working.

LIBERTY

It's official. President Bush has been out-freedomed.

During his speech at the Margraten Military Cemetery, the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende used President Bush's favourite word more often than Mr Bush did in the speech he delivered straight afterwards.

Even if you allow "liberty" to count, it was still a 14-12 Dutch victory - although three of Balkenende's "freedoms" were taken from a quote by Franklin D Roosevelt.

It was suitably inclement weather for a day marking the sacrifice and suffering of a generation.

As one wag from the White House press office put it - all hail on the chief. All hail on the chief's press corps, more to the point.

I wish I'd worn one of the orange plastic ponchos which the assembled Dutch audience were wearing patriotically.

The last time I've seen such a sea of capes in that colour was during Ukraine's Orange Revolution.

If Mr Bush had the same thought it would have warmed the cockles of his heart - if not his feet.

And what about the protests? My Dutch sources (well, Dutch family members) had assured me that protesters would be blocking the roads and disrupting the ceremony.

The only delay I experienced was when our coach failed to show and a bedraggled press crew watched as golf carts ferried veterans and their wives backwards and forwards.

I think the organisers had their priorities right.

7 May

WARM-UP

It's been a fairly gentle start to this short trip, for both President Bush and myself.

OK, so the president stayed up later than his normal 9pm last night, but his - no doubt punctual - body clock would have told him that it was the middle of the afternoon.

Since then, it's been a touch of the ceremonial here, a bit of mutual backslapping with his Baltic chums there. Everyone singing from the same, freedom-embracing songbook.

As for me, a small fish in a big White House pond, it's been a reminder of those times when I was a slightly bigger fish, based in this part of the world: first in Moscow, then in Warsaw.

Three separate Latvians, whom I've never met before, have come up to me and said that they remember my reporting from Eastern Europe - and, yes, how much they enjoyed it.

But, for both President Bush and myself, this is just the warm-up for a far bigger and far trickier event: Monday's celebrations in Moscow.

I vividly remember being among the crowds on Red Square for the 50th anniversary of VE Day. Twenty-seven million Soviet deaths. That figure and the scale of the suffering are staggering, and it should bring a sense of humility to all of us, especially if we've just had a boost to our egos.

First of all, though, there's a jaunt to the Netherlands - my wife's birthplace - and a chance for President Bush to honour America's war dead. Amid all the diplomatic shenanigans over Russia and the Baltics, they've almost been forgotten...

THE PRESIDENT'S 'NEW LADY'

Take a look at the photos of the president's arrival here in Riga and you'll see that he has a new lady in his life.

The pictures show a beaming Mr Bush, walking down the steps of Air Force One, flanked by a well-coiffured woman.

The pair are waving and smiling, happy to be here.

But it's not the first lady, Laura Bush - she's just behind them. The co-star of the show is Latvia's President, Vaire Vike-Freiberga, who took the unusual step of going to the airport to greet Mr Bush personally.

She's finding it hard to contain her excitement at this visit. It's undoubtedly a huge honour for her, and her country, and she's repaying it by speaking the same language of freedom and democracy as her guest. Almost word for word, in fact.

The White House is delighted. They couldn't have scripted it better, if they'd tried.

Not only is Mrs Vike-Freiberga (not a name that's making its way into many of my American colleagues' despatches) a shrewd politician, but, in her distinguished previous life, she was a professor of psychology in Canada.

She should know which buttons to push with the leader of the free world.

So far today, she's presented Mr Bush with Latvia's highest honour - he's now a three-star President, first class, in the eyes of the Latvian people - and she's laid a wreath with him at Latvia's Freedom Monument.

In Soviet times, the joke was that the monument, a Latvian version of the statue of Liberty, was a travel agency. Anyone who put flowers there would get a one-way ticket to Siberia.

Mr Bush isn't going to Siberia, but by tomorrow night he'll be in Moscow. And judging by President Vladimir Putin's pre-visit rhetoric he's likely to get a pretty frosty reception.

Certainly a frostier one than he's got here.

6 May

TASTE OF FREEDOM

Freedom. I've got a hunch that we'll be hearing that word quite a lot from President Bush over the next few days.

And my brief experience of the rarefied world of the White House press pool has already given me a taste for it.

For, ever since my taxi arrived at Andrews Air Force base and took the lane reserved - rather bizarrely - for press vehicles and golf carts, I've had a sense of liberation.

As part of White House protocol, I've been liberated both from my passport and from the need to check in or go through customs. And - on the flight from Washington to Riga - liberated from some of those annoying constraints that are usually part and parcel of air travel.

On board Air Force Two, there was no need to listen to a safety demonstration, no limit to the food and drink being served and - judging from the casual demeanour of my fellow journalists - no need to buckle up when the fasten seat belt signs were on.

I didn't take advantage of that last freedom, but I'm sure that by the end of the trip - when I get my White House air legs - I, too, will be sauntering about in the middle of turbulence.

Not much sense of turbulence in Riga, where we've arrived in advance of the President's and Mrs Bush.

Latvia has joined the EU since I was last here, but - outwardly, at least - very little seems to have changed. There are the obligatory Latvian, American and EU flags in evidence, but they're pretty unobtrusive and modest in number.

It's as though the country doesn't have to shout about being part of the wider, European family any more. It just is.

But if Latvia has a quiet confidence about its present, its Soviet past can still enflame passions - as this 60th anniversary of VE Day is exposing.

I think it was the comedian Eddie Izzard, who began his American stand up shows by saying - "I'm from Europe. The place with the history".

President Bush is about to see for himself just how complex that history is...

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