U.S. not planning bases in Africa, Bush says

ACCRA, GHANA — After crossing Africa from west to east and back, the central issues that followed President Bush on his tour all came together Wednesday in the white stucco Osu Castle here on the Atlantic shoreline.

With gusto, the president declared "that's baloney" to the notion that the United States was preparing to establish military bases in Africa.

"Or, as we say in Texas, that's bull," Bush said at a news conference with Ghanaian President John Kufuor.

Bush also defended the foundation of his program to combat HIV and AIDS, which emphasizes fidelity, the use of condoms and abstinence from premarital sex. He was responding to a question from a Ghanaian reporter, who said that in African societies "this doesn't really strike a chord because multiple sexual relationships or partner relationships is the reality, though it's not spoken of in public."

And Bush challenged the idea that China's progress in seizing commercial advantages in Africa, particularly in energy development, might come at the cost of U.S. opportunities.

"I don't view Africa as a zero-sum for China and the United States," Bush said.

The president, on the fifth day of a six-day trip, drove through streets lined for miles with schoolgirls in yellow dresses and boys in khaki shorts and yellow or blue shirts. He exchanged rhetorical bear hugs of admiration with Kufuor, who, like Bush, is watching a campaign to elect his successor play out.

But here, five decades after Ghana gained independence from Britain, the country's political history is largely one of coups and corruption. Kufuor was Ghana's first new president installed after a democratic election since 1960, when the country became an independent republic.

Along with Liberia, which Bush visits today in his final stop on the five-nation trip, Ghana is seen by the White House as an encouraging demonstration of political progress on the continent.

U.S. relations with Ghana are on a smooth enough footing that what had been scheduled as a 65-minute series of meetings ended early. Perhaps the most sensitive issue, the nature of a new U.S. military command responsible for Africa and whether its establishment would mean permanently stationing troops on the continent, appeared to have been resolved with Bush's promise to place no more than a headquarters operation in the region.