US First Lady Ms Laura Bush delivered the weekly presidential radio address today in an unprecedented move for a first lady, condemning the brutal degradation of women and children in Afghanistan.
"I'm Laura Bush, and I'm delivering this week's radio address to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban", she said.
Her comments, recorded at the ranch she shares with President George W Bush, marked the first time a first lady had ever done the weekly radio address solo. Ms Cherie Blair, the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will do a similar event in London on Monday or Tuesday.
"All of us have an obligation to speak out. We may come from different backgrounds and faiths, but parents the world over love our children. We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters", Mrs. Bush said.
First lady Nancy Reagan joined her husband for the weekly radio address four times, and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton participated in the radio address with her husband twice.
The White House said Mrs Bush's address was part of an orchestrated campaign to highlight the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban that included the release today of a State Department report, briefings by senior officials and a conference call among women in Congress and the Cabinet.
The State Department report urged Afghanistan's future government to include both genders, saying the Taliban's repression of women had crippled the country like cutting the wing off a bird.
The Afghan people want, and the US government supports, a broad-based representative government, which includes women, in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the report said.