By Rob Taylor CANBERRA, March 4 (Reuters) - Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday said he would visit the United States later this month for talks with U.S. President George W. Bush on a planned withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq. Rudd said he would also visit China to meet President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao after first travelling to London, Brussels and Bucharest, where he will address an upcoming NATO Summit on Afghanistan. "The visit is to advance Australia's security, foreign policy and business interests, and to advance Australia's contribution to the global response on climate change," Rudd said. Rudd and Bush spoke by telephone on Tuesday in the wake of a recent visit to Canberra by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at which both sides reaffirmed their tight military alliance and discussed progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Rudd's centre-left Labor government plans to withdraw 550 combat troops from Iraq mid-year, leaving around 1,000 non-combat troops behind and another 1,000 fighting Taliban insurgents alongside Dutch forces in southern Afghanistan. Rudd said he would meet Bush at the White House on March 28 and senior Congress members the following week in the first high-level visit since Labor's November election victory, which ended almost 12 years of conservative rule in Australia. He would also call on the United Nations in New York as Canberra considers pushing for a rotating Security Council seat. Rudd said he would go to Brussels between April 2-3 to meet senior European Commission officials for talks on the WTO Doha round of international trade talks and climate shift. He is then scheduled to become the first Australian leader to address NATO chiefs and reinforce non-alliance member Canberra's concern about progress in the Afghan war, lifting pressure on European pact members like Germany to do more to help battle the Taliban. Australia is the biggest contributor of troops in Afghanistan outside NATO and has demanded greater access to the alliance war plan for the country. (Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
Smoke billows from a paper mill in Xiangfan, Hubei province March 3, 2008. China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao strongly supports unified management of the energy sector and the creation of an ...
