Europe takes new look at Bush before trip

President Bush’s re-election and the successful vote in Iraq have had a profound effect on public opinion in Europe, with expectations soaring for Mr. Bush’s trip there later this month, a leading member of the European Parliament says.

Spanish center-right lawmaker Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, a vice president of the European Parliament, said Mr. Bush’s trip to Belgium, Germany and Slovakia — the first foreign trip of his second term — could mark a sharp break with recent public and elite hostility in Europe over the Iraq war and other U.S. policies.

“A trip like this could not have happened three, even two years ago,” said Mr. Vidal-Quadras in an interview during a trip to Washington this week. “The atmosphere in some countries was just too hostile.

“But Mr. Bush’s win and the mostly successful vote in Iraq — neither of which most people in Europe expected — have made the attitude much more conciliatory.”

Expectations are so high, he added, “that the real danger we might face is disappointing people’s hopes if something substantive is not achieved on the trip.”

Mr. Bush travels to Brussels for a Feb. 22 summit with leaders from NATO and the European Union. He also plans to meet with two of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war — German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a one-day summit in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Mr. Bush’s first term was marked by severe disagreements with leading EU powers, not only over Iraq, but also over U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto global warming treaty, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.

European public opinion surveys showed a deep dislike for Mr. Bush and a widespread hope that Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry would unseat him.

But new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earned warm-to- glowing reviews on her fence-mending tour through Europe this week. She called for trans-Atlantic unity and for putting the divisions over Iraq in the past.

“The times are different now than they were a year or two ago when we did have our differences, not with everyone, but with a number of states,” Miss Rice said in a visit to Belgium on Wednesday.

“We do have a common agenda, now that the war or the major military operations are behind us, now that we are facing the fact of an Iraqi people who are taking risks of their own for the democratic future,” she said.

Peter Mandelson, the European Union’s trade commissioner, said in a Washington speech yesterday that Miss Rice had made a “strong and positive impression.”

“It’s time to bury our political differences on Iraq and work together — Europe and America — on a positive international agenda,” Mr. Mandelson said. “There are enough challenges before us that we cannot solve acting on our own.”

A columnist in the British leftist newspaper Guardian observed of Miss Rice’s tour that, “after a long, trying estrangement, Europe felt loved again.”

Mr. Vidal-Quadras said few in Europe expect Mr. Bush to reverse course on contentious issues such as Iraq.

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