Queen Elizabeth to conclude history-laden U.S. visit

Queen Elizabeth to conclude history-laden U.S. visit

On the final day of her six-day trip, the 81-year-old monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, visited a NASA space center before heading to a children's hospital and the national World War II memorial.

Before flying home late Tuesday, they were also to host a dinner for  President George W. Bush and his wife Laura at the British embassy, reciprocating a lavish White House banquet held Monday.

"Ours is a partnership always to be reckoned with in the defense of freedom and the spread of prosperity," the queen said in a toast to Bush at the ultra-formal white-tie state dinner, which was thick with velvet and jewels.

"Disagree from time to time we may, but united we must always remain," she added, in perhaps a nod to the bitter public opposition in Britain to Bush's decision to invade Iraq with the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

As Blair prepares to step down and Bush's poll ratings sink ever-lower, the queen's first state visit here since 1991 has given both nations a chance to dwell on simpler times.

Last week the royal couple toured the marshy, bug-infested island of Jamestown in Virginia where, 400 years ago this month, 104 English men and boys founded the New World's first permanent English settlement.

In his own dinner toast, Bush lauded the queen's steadfast commitment to the transatlantic alliance during her 55-year reign, which has encompassed 11 U.S. presidents and seen the demise of the Cold War.

"We're confident that the Anglo-American friendship will endure for centuries to come," he said.

"Our alliance is rooted in the beliefs that we share," the president said. "Together we are supporting young democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Bush got his lines right during the banquet toasts, in contrast to a verbal fluff earlier Monday during a ceremonial welcome for the royal couple held in brilliant spring sunshine on the south lawn of the White House.

Bush said Elizabeth had visited the United States "in 17 -- in 1976" to mark the 200th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from Britain.

After the queen glanced up at him from under her wide-brimmed black hat, he winked at her, and joked to the laughing audience: "She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child."

In Britain, newspapers were scathing Tuesday about Bush's blundering welcome for the queen, labelling him "Dumb Dubya" and saying he has the "gift for the gaffe."

At NASA's Goddard Center, located in a Maryland suburb outside of Washington, Elizabeth and Philip inspected scientists' cutting-edge work on space exploration.

NASA said the visit highlighted U.S.-British space collaboration, including the Hubble Space Telescope and a new partnership agreed last month between the US space agency and the British National Space Centre.

After meeting patients and researchers at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, the royal couple were to lay a wreath at the war memorial on the National Mall.

The memorial, which opened in April 2004, honors the more than 400,000 US servicemen and women killed in World War II.

At the White House dinner, the queen said her country's "very survival" from extermination by Nazi Germany was bound up in its wartime alliance with the United States.

"For those of us who have witnessed the peace and stability and prosperity enjoyed in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe over these postwar years, we have every reason to remember that this has been founded on the bedrock of the Atlantic alliance," she said.