Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Haditha. America's problems in and over Iraq are casting a long shadow over US President George W. Bush's meeting with European Union leaders in Vienna this week.

With the meeting restricted to US officials and the EU leadership, the heads of major European countries such as Britain, France or Germany will not attend and the meeting is focusing on tamer topics, such as the need to abolish agricultural subsidies or strategies on reducing the West's addiction to imported oil and gas. Iran's nuclear ambitions are also on the agenda of the one-day event tomorrow.

But the United States' sinking world standing will be the unspoken theme on everybody's mind.

Ahead of the visit, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he doubted Bush would have much to say about suicides and other concerns over the US detention centre for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq and an alleged massacre of unarmed civilians at in the Iraqi town of Haditha.

For millions of Europeans from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, however, these are the issues that matter and their concerns are shared by politicians from the local level all the way to the top of the EU hierarchy.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, plans to urge Bush to shut down Guantanamo. Peter Pilz, a senior member of Austria's Green party, says the centrist Schuessel should do even more by explaining to Bush "that the criminal actions of his government will not be tolerated in Europe."

Pilz is one of Austria's more outspoken public figures. Still, his sentiments that America is breaking the law in Iraq and in its larger fight against terror are widely shared by many Europeans angry over Haditha, the Guantanamo suicides and before that the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, the reported existence of secret CIA prisons worldwide and the Iraq invasion itself.

Austrian police are on alert for possible violent anti-Bush demonstrations, while newspaper editorials across much of Europe reflect the old continent's dismay with a partnership most here see as has having gone wrong.

In France, the center-left "Le Monde" wrote of the Guantanamo suicides: "We continue to ask by what heavenly decree America holds itself above the rule of law."

America's image problems in Europe are reflected by a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and released last week.

Favourable opinions of the United States this year ranged from a high of 56 per cent in key US ally Britain to a low of 23 per cent in Spain; France and Germany the other European countries in the 15-nation poll somewhere in-between. Even in Britain, support for Bush was only at 30 per cent; and 60 per cent of British respondents said the war in Iraq has made the world less safe.

Source: China Daily