Bush says dial 1-800-OOPS for housing help

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. homeowners who could face crippling mortgage payments will have a hard time getting help if they call a telephone number President George W. Bush recommended on Thursday -- he gave them the wrong number.

"I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE," Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.

Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE (4673). That gets you through to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a non-profit group which offers free housing counselling for homeowners.

Moments after Bush completed his remarks, a White House aide told reporters the president misspoke and gave the correct number.

Calls to the wrong number Bush gave out were met with an engaged tone. A search on the Internet showed it belongs to the Freedom Christian Academy which offers religious-based curriculum for home schooling and is located in Ponder, Texas northwest of Dallas.

US faces hard choices in Pakistan

Washington, November 7: As the US began a review of aid to Pakistan after imposition of emergency rule, its choices seemed limited by its need to keep President Pervez Musharraf on its side in the fight against terror.

Officials at the White House and the State Department indicated as much Tuesday as they were hard put to defend the Bush administration's double standards in reacting to the situation in Myanmar and Pakistan where 'an ally in the war on terror has made a mistake'.

"We have to be mindful to make sure that we do not undermine any of our counter-terrorism efforts. The president has to protect the American people," said White House spokesperson Dana Perino.

"Pakistan is a country where extremists are trying to take hold and have a safe haven, and we had to deny them that. And we have been working with the Pakistani government, through President Musharraf, for the past several years on that," she said.

"I don't think that anybody expects that the president or the government is going to take a step that might make the United States less safe or might diminish our capabilities to fight terror," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

But he insisted officials would be 'absolutely faithful' in upholding US laws conditioning military aid to Pakistan, which has reached nearly $10 billion since the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

McCormack said the administration was committed to a thorough review of US aid to Pakistan and officials at State and Defence departments and other government agencies were doing an inventory of aid programmes and legal requirements.

NYT blames Bush for crisis in Pakistan

New York, November 6: The New York Times has blamed President George Bush for the crisis in Pakistan and suggested he consider discussions with India, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia on how to prevent further instability there.

"The United States is increasingly left with bad options," the influential US daily said in an editorial Tuesday noting, 'cutting off aid would only make it harder to enlist Pakistan's military in the anti-extremist fight and renew doubts about America's reliability as an ally'.

"The United States should at least condition that money on Pakistan's performance in the anti-terrorism fight, on some form of accountability and on shifting more of it toward building political parties, courts and schools," it said.

"It should also consider discussions with India, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia on how to prevent further instability in Pakistan," the Times suggested.



While critical of Bush, the daily seemed to favour the Washington-brokered deal between Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as a good bet as 'ultimately, democracy, not dictatorship, is the best hope for a stable Pakistan'.

Reviving Musharraf's backroom deal with Bhutto, 'however distasteful, may be a way back from the abyss if it includes a real commitment to elections by the general, if Ms. Bhutto insists that the elections be open to all parties and if Mr. Bush gives her strong backing', it said.

By imposing martial law, Musharraf has pushed nuclear-armed Pakistan further along a perilous course and underscored the failure of President Bush's policy toward a key ally in the war on terrorism, the daily said.

But 'the events should not have come as a surprise to administration officials. This is what you get when policy is centred slavishly on a single, autocratic ruler rather than more broadly on his country'.

Noting that returning Pakistan to civilian government has been a declared goal of the US since General Musharraf seized power in 1999 in a bloodless military coup, the daily noted that he has repeatedly broken promises to move in that direction.

"Most of the time, Mr. Bush, who says he cannot win the anti-terrorism war without General Musharraf but clearly can't win it with him either, acquiesced in his misdeeds," the Times alleged.

"The Faustian nature of the bargain is more apparent than ever. Not only has the general proven less committed to the anti-terrorism fight than expected (Al Qaeda and the Taliban are resurgent on the border with Afghanistan), but now he has abandoned any pretence of moving toward democracy," it said.

Bush seems to have gained little leverage from the more than $10 billion in American aid that has fattened Pakistan's coffers since September 11, 2001, much of it unaccounted for, the daily said.

'Bush personally wanted top Briton at UN sacked'

Asian News International - Text
Last Updated: October 27, 2007 10:33:02



London, October 27: A former US diplomat has claimed President Bush had personally pushed for the sacking of Lord Malloch-Brown from the UN because he was "anti-American".

According to a new book written by John Bolton, Washington's former UN Ambassador, Bush had asked incoming UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to oust Lord Malloch-Brown from the post of UN Deputy Secretary-General, the highest UN post ever held by a Briton.

Malloch-Brown is now a junior foreign office minister, reports the Daily Mail.

The revelation seems to point to America's unhappiness with Lord Malloch-Brown, who caused a rumpus in July by declaring that Britain should distance itself from the United States.

According to Bolton, Bush met Ban informally on October 17 last year, told him to "get rid of the (senior) staff" and to appoint his own team when he took over at the start of 2007.

The American president reportedly specifically asked Ban to "get rid of Malloch-Brown", calling him "anti-American", Bolton reports.

Ban did not renew Lord Malloch-Brown's contract, and, within months, he was given a peerage and named foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations in Gordon Brown's first appointments as prime minister.

Bolton clashed repeatedly with Lord Malloch-Brown while serving as the US Ambassador at the UN headquarters - a job he says Lord Malloch-Brown lobbied to stop him getting.

"This petty bureaucrat obviously saw himself as floating above UN member governments, rather than recognising he was a mere international civil servant," Bolton writes.

Bolton, a Baltimore fireman's son who rose to become a leading voice of the Republican Right, and served as UN ambassador in 2005-2006, bristles at what he sees as the condescending attitude of British diplomats.

"Many Brits believed that their role in life was to play Athens to America's Rome, lending us the benefit of their superior suaveness, and smoothing off our regrettable colonial rough edges," Bolton writes.

"Jones-Parry (Britain's Permanent Representative at the UN) was obviously of that ilk," he says.