European leaders are hoping to use key meetings with US President George W. Bush in Brussels next week to repair transatlantic relations following two years of acrimony over the Iraq war.
Bush, on his first foreign tour after starting his second presidential term last month, will be attending separate summit talks at NATO and European Union headquarters on Tuesday. Meetings are planned with the Belgian government a day earlier.
But while the mood is clearly mellower than in recent years, EU policymakers and independent analysts warn of abiding disagreements between the two sides on a range of foreign policy, human rights and environmental issues.
Official statements from both sides however paint an altogether rosier picture.
"We did have our differences," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Brussels last week during a much-publicised charm offensive to win over disgruntled Europeans.
But the focus was now on how Americans and Europeans, with a "history of shared values," could work together, Rice said.
Significantly, Rice repeated Washington's support for a strong and united EU
More surprisingly given his well-known Euro-sceptic views, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also been trying to woo Europeans ahead of the Bush visit.
Attending an international security conference in Munich recently, Rumsfeld steered clear of his legendary confrontational style which once led him to dub anti-Iraq war nations Germany and France as "old Europe." Instead, the US defence chief poked fun at himself, saying that such remarks had been "old Rumsfeld".
EU policymakers appear just as anxious to mend fences with the world's sole superpower.
Bush's visit will "symbolise the strong and enduring bonds of transatlantic cooperation that are stronger by far than any differences," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after meetings with Rice.
Experts say one reason for Washington's change of heart over Europe is that the US administration has finally realised that it needs the EU and NATO help to deal with post-conflict Iraq.
"The US is rediscovering the need for friends and allies," says William Drozdiak, head of the American German Council in New York.
Europeans, for their part, are responding. NATO diplomats say all 26 alliance governments are now prepared to contribute to an expanded training operation for Iraqi security forces.
While some countries will send troops to Iraq to bolster the current NATO mission in the country, others like Germany will train Iraqi security personnel outside Iraq or contribute financially to the operation.
Breaking with their past reticence on the issue, EU governments have also said they will undertake a first-ever collective police training mission for Iraq.
The program to train around 800 senior Iraqi judges, police and other officials is, however, expected to take place outside the country due to security concerns. The EU also said it wants to play a role in helping Iraq draft a new constitution.
Diplomats also expect agreement on efforts to secure elusive Middle East peace.
But areas of dissent remain. Rice cautioned the EU against lifting a 15-year-old arms embargo against China, saying the move could destabilise the military balance in Asia.
The Bush administration is also sceptical of efforts by Germany, France and Britain to find a diplomatic way out of the current nuclear standoff with Iran.
EU leaders will raise concerns about the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay as well as Washington's refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The EU also wants Washington to take a lead in efforts to reform the UN.
Differences have also re-emerged over whether NATO or the EU should be the privileged forum for transatlantic communication.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder suggested recently that NATO was "no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and coordinate strategies" and called for a high-ranking panel to review creating new cooperation structures.
Reaction from the Pentagon and alliance officials has been predictably negative, but EU officials have welcomed the proposal, underlining that for many areas of transatlantic cooperation such as trade, aid and immigration Washington already works more with the EU than with NATO.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused