Bush, Blair to review troops' progress in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are grappling with three of the world's toughest conflicts in Bush's 19-hour visit to Belfast, discussing war and rebuilding in Iraq while trying to revive peace efforts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.\nBush departed Washington early Monday en route to Belfast for a summit meant primarily to review war progress and to iron out differences about how Iraq will be rebuilt and governed when hostilities end.\nThe reconstruction question has divided the president's advisers and the United States and Britain. Blair wants deeper U.N. involvement in postwar Iraq than Bush, who seeks a transitional governing authority consisting of Iraqi exiles and people living in the country now.\nIrish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, the other leader invited to the summit, said Monday he would tell Bush the United Nations should have a primary role in the reconstruction of Iraq.\n"We want to see a new administration that will have greater legitimacy if it is under the (authority) of the international community," he told reporters in Dublin.\nIt wasn't clear whether the summit would produce firm agreements on postwar Iraq. White House spokesman Sean McCormack said the meeting would "further the process of considering these questions about post-Saddam Iraq, reconstruction, humanitarian aid."\nThe Bush-Blair meeting is the two leaders' third face-to-face session in just over three weeks.\nBy agreeing to Blair's request to meet in Belfast, Bush is taking the boldest step of his presidency into the decades-old conflict in Northern Ireland, and adding a set of issues that complicates his trip.\nThen-President Bill Clinton made three trips to Northern Ireland, the most of any U.S. president. Clinton's envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, led the Belfast negotiations that produced the British province's Good Friday peace accord of 1998. That pact sought to end three decades of sectarian conflict in the British territory that saw more than 3,600 killings.\nBush has shown less interest, delegating the business of following Belfast developments to a senior State Department official, Richard Haass.