US President George W. Bush is making his last trip to Europe during his remaining tenure of office, which began Monday or on June 9, and would take him to Germany, Italy, France and Britain, apart from attending his last summit with the European Union (EU) in Slovenia. World public opinions have mostly defined the visit as his farewell trip but, in fact, he bears much heavier responsibilities for the trip.
First of all, it is an annual summit between the United States and the EU, which poses the sole dialogue platform at the highest level between the U.S. and E.U. as an integrated whole. The two sides reached much consensuses on the launch of the Transatlantic Economic Council at the US-EU summit held in Washington, D.C. in April 2007 with an aim to reduce US/EU trade barriers.
Although EU and U.S. will not sign any agreements of vital importance at this year's summit as they did last year, they have to commit themselves to stepping up their cooperation with respect to climate change, energy security and to underpin stability in the international financial system.
For President Bush, the more crucial task for his ongoing trip is to seek the support of major European powers in diplomatic affairs, and this also evolves his main considerations in his tour of Germany, Italy, France and Britain.
The U.S. would very much like to convince the European nations to beef up their pressure on Iran. Prior to his European trip, Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington D.C., and made Iran's nuclear issue the focus of their talks.
The US attitude toward Iran has turned tough once again lately, and urge more measures to be taken against it on the basis of sanctions imposed by the UN. Likewise, European nations cannot accept an Iran with a possession of nuclear weapons, but they differ with the U.S. on how to appraise or cope with it. The U.S. is particularly concerned with European nations for not joining it in taking stern moves against Iran for the fear that they would try hard to get oil from it. At present, half the countries involved in the six-nation talks on the Iranian nuclear issue are EU member nations, namely, Britain, France and Germany.
The U.S. also wants to win the EU support to Afghanistan on the latter's reconstruction issue. In the wake of the September 11 attacks of 2001 in the U.S., NATO members voiced their endorsement to the Afghanistan War, but such support has lessened continuously in term of intensity. At the NATO summit held in April this year, there were still a number of countries, such as Australia and Canada, clamored for their troop pullout despite the commitment made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a troop increase. President Bush hopes to contain this trend and see European nations offer their aid generously (to Afghanistan) in an international Aid-Afghanistan conference to be convened soon.
Beside, sky-rocketing food and petroleum prices worldwide, the Iraq issue and the Palestine/Israel conflict have also been listed onto the agenda of Bush's Europe trip.
Some marked changes, however, have taken place in the attitude of European nations toward President Bush mainly because the strained EU-US ties resultant from the Iraq war have been eased considerably. Meanwhile, Bush has come to see the value of US allies and somewhat alleviated the use of US unilateralism. With regard to individual nations, Germany and France have altered their policies of "balancing the U.S."ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkoy took power and re-emphasized the importance of reinforcing the transatlantic cooperation. They still hold a critical view or position toward the U.S., nevertheless, on such issues as the war on terror and the Guantanamo prison, or the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and particularly with their confrontation on climate change issue.
The Japanese Daily "Yomiuri Shimbun" has inferred the European reaction to the ongoing Bush trip as a policy of disengagement from President Bush. It seems that the outcome of his EU trip would be limited, though the atmosphere is much better than that for previous trips.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Feng Zhongping, director of the Center for European Studies affiliated to the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations
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