Blair Attends Final Meeting at White House

By Alex Chadwick,

Published May 17, 2007 at 12:00 PM CDT

President Bush hosted Tony Blair for a final joint news conference at the White House on Thursday.

The president became somewhat defensive when asked if his relationship with Blair led to the British leader's decision to resign.

Blair announced last week that he will step down as prime minister on June 27. He has been harshly criticized at home for his decision to support the war in Iraq.

The outgoing British prime minister expressed his thanks to President Bush, and both leaders defended the decision to invade Iraq.

Blair spent the night at the White House, an indication of the warm relationship he has with President Bush.

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Alex Chadwick

For more than 30 years, Alex Chadwick has been bringing the world to NPR listeners as an NPR News producer, program host and currently senior correspondent. He's reported from every continent except Antarctica.

Don Gonyea

You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.

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