Bush Faults WWII Legacy In E. Europe

In another implicit riposte to Putin's defensiveness about Soviet actions, Bush noted the "lengthy and violent" American journey to democracy, including the "enslavement of millions" and the legal segregation that followed. "Americans found that racial division almost destroyed us, and the false doctrine of 'separate but equal' was no basis for a strong and unified country," he said.

The president's visit to this picturesque seaside city of cobblestone streets and castles was punctuated by many testaments to the past. After receiving Latvia's highest medal, Bush accompanied President Vaira Vike-Freiberga to lay wreaths at Freedom Monument, a towering obelisk constructed in 1935 during the brief period of Baltic independence between the world wars. First lady Laura Bush visited a Holocaust memorial to the victims of a Nazi regime her husband described as "an empire of bottomless cruelty" that "defined evil for the ages."

Most of the city was empty as fences were thrown up around the downtown and hundreds of police officers in blue coats and yellow vests stood watch. One of the few Latvian citizens still in town, a gray-haired woman in a pink wool cap, held up a large hand-drawn sign along Bush's motorcade route condemning Soviet occupation: "We Latvians Want to be Free -- And Not Slaves!!"

Bush later left Riga bound for Maastricht, in the Netherlands, where on Sunday he will visit a cemetery of U.S. soldiers killed in World War II before flying to Moscow for dinner with Putin. While Vike-Freiberga will also attend the events in Moscow, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Estonian President Arnold Ruutel refused to go.

Few places in Europe are more pro-American than the Baltic states, all of which joined NATO last year and have contributed forces to the U.S.-led mission in Iraq. Yet in a nod to Russian sensibilities, Bush used the occasion to gently urge all three countries to do more to respect the rights of their Russian minorities, a particularly volatile issue in Latvia, where many ethnic Russians still do not have citizenship and complain about Latvian language requirements.

"While keeping your Latvian identity and language," Bush said, "you have a responsibility to reach out to all who share the future of Latvia."

He had tougher words for another neighboring country, Belarus, a flat expanse of farms and factories south of here ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko, an open admirer of Stalin often described as the last dictator in Europe. "Repression has no place on this continent," Bush said. Belarusans "deserve the same freedom you have."

Referring to recent democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, Bush vowed to continue helping opposition forces working to topple authoritarian regimes and urged Russia to make peace with the "freedom movement" spreading around its borders.

Although U.S. officials usually disclaim responsibility for fomenting uprisings in Moscow's sphere, Bush essentially embraced it. "The idea of countries helping others become free, I would hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary," he said, "but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy."