Amanpour: Bush unlikely to see many protesters
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CNN's Christiane Amanpour
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CNN's Christiane Amanpour on protests in London.
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| BUSH'S BRITISH ITINERARY |
Wednesday • Attends welcoming ceremony at Buckingham Palace. • Meets Britain's opposition leaders. • Delivers speech on trans-Atlantic alliance. • Meets British families who lost loved ones on September 11. • Speaks at state banquet in Buckingham Palace. Thursday• Visits Westminster Abbey and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. • Meets soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and their families. • Holds talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair. • Co-hosts roundtable discussion on HIV/AIDS with Blair • Hosts dinner for Queen Elizabeth. Friday• Travels to Blair's northern England constituency of Sedgefield.
Source: Reuters |
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- President Bush marked the first full day of his state visit to Britain with a key speech Wednesday defending the invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile, protesters took to the streets of London to protest U.S. actions in the Middle East country.
CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour spoke Wednesday with CNN Anchor Daryn Kagan about the atmosphere in the British capital.
AMANPOUR: There have been quite a few protesters on the streets, although they're saying that today is a warm-up for the protest that's planned [Thursday] here in Trafalgar Square.
But certainly there was about 1,000 people in one demonstration. There was a couple of hundred in another. There are small protests taking place in different parts of the city, some of which converged here in Trafalgar Square.
Today there was an "alternate state procession" because, according to the Secret Service of the United States, security concerns have meant that President Bush will forgo the traditional horse-drawn carriage ride with the queen ... through the streets of London.
So these people dressed up as look-alikes. They took their own horse-drawn buggies through the streets. There was a lot of pointed references to opposition to America's foreign policy, particularly the war in Iraq. This was the Stop the War Coalition, which had brought out those 1 million people just before the war.
Now there is a great deal of conflicting emotion about this visit because while polls show, and British people say constantly, that they are definitely pro-American, that they believe implicitly in the vital nature, in the vital importance of the American-British alliance, they're saying that they just don't like this administration's foreign policy because they are afraid of what's perceived as a unilateral foreign policy.
They think -- they say -- that this makes things more difficult and less secure around the world. They don't like the idea that this administration uses war as its central platform. This according to polls [that have been] published -- sort of trying to survey British public opinion.
So that's what's going on here. And certainly President Bush is being kept away and the demonstrators [are] kept away from President Bush. He's unlikely to catch a glimpse of any of those protesters, and he's unlikely to really meet any opposition face to face. He chose to not make the traditional head of state or head of government address to Parliament, instead giving that speech to a secluded audience at lunchtime today.
KAGAN: And what about Tony Blair and his political future at this point?
AMANPOUR: Well, not many people are doubting his political future right now. He still has a very fractured opposition, although there has been some sort of rallying of the troops in his party with the new conservative party leader.
But in terms of the war, in terms of how that might play out in a future election, his policies, while they were very unpopular, two-thirds of the British people opposed the war before it started, it's beginning -- the numbers -- to creep up a little bit in terms of his overall popularity.
Of course, it's too early to say what that might mean for a future election. He is unpopular, but not in a catastrophic way.
