Brisbane - Australia's incoming prime minister Kevin Rudd laid out on Sunday his action plan for the country and its ties with the world.
Rudd, 50, who on Saturday ousted Prime Minister John Howard's 11-year-old conservative government in an election landslide, said he had spoken to world leaders and was already planning visits to the United States and Indonesia.
In his first press conference since winning the election, the centre-left leader, who has pledged to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq, stressed that Canberra's relationship with Washington was crucial despite policy differences.
"I emphasised to President Bush the centrality of the US alliance in our approach to future foreign policy," Rudd said after Bush telephoned him to congratulate him on defeating the US president's close ally.
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"I also indicated that I would like to visit the United States at an early opportunity, sometime next year, and I thanked President Bush for his gracious response to that, an indication that I will be made most welcome in the US," he said.
But Rudd refused to be drawn on whether he had discussed withdrawing Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq with Bush, who has sharply criticised Rudd's plan to pull out by the middle of next year.
"I am not going into the detail of the conversation with President Bush, I don't think that's appropriate," he said in his home town of Brisbane in eastern Queensland state.
In a short, business-like press conference, Rudd stood at a podium against a background of Australian flags and said he had also spoken to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Both men had phoned him to congratulate the Chinese-speaking former diplomat, who said that global warming - which Rudd has said will be his main priority in government - was a dominant feature of their discussions.
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