President Bush Prepares Last State of the Union Address

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush delivers his last State of the Union address Monday but no agenda-setting announcements were expected, with more incomplete job as the battle to win him rages. With less than 12 months left in his condition, the profoundly unpopular president is slated to resurrect a few audacious ideas -- such as his May 2007 request to double US funding to fight AIDS -- and contend that US-led forces are winning in Iraq. But he faces an US economy in crisis; the unsure destiny of his late-game Middle East peace effort; a battle over ending North Korea's atomic programs, and tensions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "I will describe that over the last seven years, we've made good advancement on significant issues at house and overseas. I will too describe that we have incomplete job before us, and we must make jointly," he said Saturday.

He will advocate lawmakers to okay a proposed US economical stimulation packet anticipated by mid-February; have lasting his large taxation cuts, which die in 2010; and okay available deal pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Bush is too expected to ask on the US Congress to restore his signature training reform police, okay a contentious police allowing warrantless spying on US citizens, and curtail its appetite for expensive pet projects. Bush told the USA Today paper in a consultation Thursday that he would not wax emotional over his moment in agency, partially because "we've got then more going on" that there is less moment to belong on the past. "Look at the reality -- you've got Iraq, Iran, Middle Eastern peace opportunities, North Korea, Sudan, Burma. This is a reality that is complete of opportunities to scatter exemption and promise and chance," he said.

But spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged a day subsequently that "it is impractical" to require lawmakers to take Bush's calls for overhauling immigration policy and pension programs backwards from the asleep. She said Bush will concentrate on "original policy proposals with practical chances of passage. " The address comes almost three months after the president helped resurrect Middle East peace talks, and about three weeks after he visited the area in hopes of promoting an accord to produce a Palestinian country by recently 2008. For years, Bush has battled charges of keeping the peace procedure at weapon's duration by saying he was the best sitting US president to ask for such a country. "Bush is a lengthy stroke to hit away a diplomatic victory that has eluded a lengthy cable of away negotiators," wrote a Washington Post columnist in a column Sunday on the Middle East peace matter.

Bush, whose moment in agency was shaped by the September 11, 2001 attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda web, is improbable to speak the fact that the violent originator he vowed to seize "asleep or awake" is yet at big. And six years after Bush used the State of the Union to announce Iran, North Korea, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq an "axis of sinister," all three countries are yet an origin of leading headaches. In Iraq, Bush's resolution to "soar" approximately 30,000 much US troops to the frontal lines has helped cut violence to approximately 2005 levels, but has failed to attain the policy's two leading goals: political rapprochement and Iraqi protection forces taking obligation for their nation by November 2007. Democrats opposed to the warfare have watched with dismay as the White House has declared plans to seal a long-term important relationship with Iraq by July -- easily before the November elections that will determine Bush's heir.

North Korea wanted a December 31 deadline to full break its central activities, forcing the White House to stay a new world rising by a best emissary against Bush's smooth access. US officials interest that Pyongyang may be searching to work away the clock before Bush's replacement takes over in January 2009, risking that the other chair will provide the Stalinist country a best hand. Iran has keeped to reject UN sanctions and world force to finish uranium enrichment, while Washington has struggled to keep smooth partners, particularly China and Russia, on card with its confrontational access.

Bush's address on Monday risks being overshadowed by the robust candidacy for nominations to operate in November's election to supplant him, with important main votes in Florida on Tuesday. "He's got a trouble," Thomas Mann, an elderly associate at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank, told the McClatchy word service. "No one's truly listening any much."