U.S. now trying to make peace with Europe

BERLIN -- With the Iraq war done, U.S. officials are now working on peace with Europe.

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, has been meeting with French and German business leaders and government officials this week, touting shared interests in commerce and delivering a message that, although their opposition to the military action is neither forgotten nor forgiven, it is time to move forward.

Meeting with journalists Friday in Berlin, Zoellick talked of the "deep sense of disappointment and hurt" felt by Americans when Germany and France worked to block U.S. plans to go to war in the United Nations.

"I think there is a feeling among the general public and government officials that when the chips are down and you need a friend, you'd like to be able to count on your friends," Zoellick said. "And it's even more difficult when the friends work against you."

But having shared that thought -- and using similar language in Paris on Tuesday -- Zoellick dwelt on how Europe and the United States are "joined at the hip" economically. That relationship amounts to $1.5 trillion in annual trade and investments that support 4 million jobs on each continent.

This means when there is talk of Americans boycotting French Bordeaux, the effect blows back across the Atlantic. For example, nearly 40 percent of the leading French stock market is owned by international pension funds, most of them based in the United States, according to Ernst & Young, one of 11 multinationals that warned against economical reprisals against France in a letter this week to the financial daily Les Echos.

Zoellick is the first high-level U.S. official to meet in person with Germans since the diplomatic fighting over the war in Iraq died down. There's more in the works: Over the weekend an emissary from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser.

Rice was widely quoted last month as describing the Bush administration's postwar diplomatic strategy as "Forgive Russia, ignore Germany and punish France."

Showing that that statement was merely bluster will be U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's session with his German counterpart, Defense Secretary Peter Struck. And U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell plans a late May visit.

This activity follows recent conciliatory words from Schroeder, whose campaigning against U.S military action in Iraq last summer left many Bush administration officials feeling betrayed. Bush and Schroeder have not spoken since they shook hands in Prague at a NATO summit in November.

"The trust that was there is gone," said Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute, a think tank in Berlin. "It will remain gone until you have regime change in Berlin and Washington."

The good news for Germany, says Gedmin, is that the situation is worse for France. "France's oppositional defiance was more vocal, more eloquent and it mattered more -- they had a permanent seat on the (U.N.) Security Council," Gedmin said. "They got Americans' attention more. It hurt more, shocked more, cut deeper."

Political analysts see minimal economic effect from the trans- Atlantic chill. Although Germany and France are likely to miss out on postwar reconstruction projects, their being part of the World Trade Organization limits most of the potential damage.

On the issues of defense and security, the blow-back is likely to be fiercest. U.S. officials have talked of limiting France's influence in NATO.

Zoellick got in his licks, blasting Brussels -- "that paragon of power," he put it -- for hosting a mini-European defense summit for France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg this week. "I don't think it was a constructive step," he said.

Copyright C 2003 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.