FT.com / Middle East & Africa - Bush and Assad enlist wives for charm offensive

FT.com / Middle East & Africa - Bush and Assad enlist wives for charm offensive: "Using her high ratings in the US to project a friendlier face of an administration that has little credibility in the region, Laura Bush sought to promote her husband's agenda for democratisation at a World Economic Forum conference at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan. She then travelled on Sunday to Jerusalem, where she was heckled by both Muslim and Jewish protestors.
Expressing her delight at last week's decision by the Kuwaiti parliament to grant women the right to vote, Mrs Bush told an audience of more than 1,300 international business and political leaders: 'Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression. It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely.'
In Damascus, Asma al-Assad, probably the most modern and glamorous face of a country still largely stuck in the Soviet era, sought to enhance the credibility of a regime that is isolated internationally and facing rising domestic demands for change. 'We need to see more far-reaching political and institutional reforms. Only this will attract the foreign investment necessary for our economy to flourish,' Mrs Assad, a former financial analyst who was raised in London, told a 'Women in Business' conference. "