World Jun. 14, 2008 - 05:46AM JST ( 11 )

PARIS —

U.S. President George W Bush on Friday celebrated warmer ties with France on his farewell tour of Europe and urged the “powerful and purposeful” continent to do more in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush, delivering the keynote speech of his final Europe trip before leaving office in January, said much had changed since he and First Lady Laura Bush last came to Paris four years ago, ruefully noting: “My hair is a lot grayer.”

“What has not changed is the friendship between America and France. Recent history has made clear that no disagreement can diminish the deep ties between our nations,” Bush said, in an evident reference to the rift over Iraq.

With much of Europe already looking to his successor, the U.S. president said whoever inherits the White House will also take custody of “the broadest and most vibrant” transatlantic ties ever.

In the leaders of Italy, Britain, Germany, and France, “I see a commitment to a powerful and purposeful Europe that advances the values of liberty within its borders, and beyond,” he said.

But Bush stressed Europe must do more to help Afghanistan and Iraq overcome ongoing deadly violence, the same way Washington helped the continent rise from the ashes of World War II and the uncertainty of the early Cold War years.

Bush applauded French President Nicolas Sarkozy for pledging to send more troops to Afghanistan and for hosting a donors’ conference Thursday that yielded $20 billion for rebuilding the war-battered country.

“Our nations must ensure that Afghanistan is never again a safe haven for terror,” said the U.S. leader, whose warm relationship with Sarkozy is in marked contrast to the icy relations with his predecessor Jacques Chirac.

Bush, whose trip aimed to win tougher European sanctions against Tehran over its suspect atomic program, underlined that “for the security of Europe, and for the peace of the world, we must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

He also said a Middle East peace agreement may be possible in 2008 and that “it is in the interest of every nation on this continent to support a stable and democratic Iraq.”

After stops in Slovenia and Germany, Bush came to Paris fresh from a visit to Italy and a special audience with Pope Benedict XVI just two months after the White House laid on a lavish 81st birthday party for the pontiff.

The two met in the Vatican’s medieval Saint John’s Tower and strolled through the secluded Vatican Gardens, a walled enclave that has been a place of quiet meditation for popes since the 13th century.

The “special protocol”—papal audiences are normally held in the pontiff’s private library—was followed “to respond to the cordiality of the welcome received by the Supreme Pontiff” in April in Washington, the Vatican said.

Bush and his wife Laura dined with the French president, sometimes dubbed “Sarkozy l’Americain” (Sarkozy the American), and his new wife, model-turned-singer Carla Bruni, even as a group of 26 left-wing French parties and organizations hold anti-Bush protests in Paris.

Where Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq war deeply angered Washington, Sarkozy has moved to toughen France’s stance on Iran and and has offered to bring France back into NATO’s integrated command, which it left in 1966 when Charles De Gaulle rejected U.S. dominance of the alliance.

“France was America’s first friend, and over the centuries our nations stood united in moments of testing,” through two World Wars, the Cold War, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the United States, Bush said.

After those attacks, “a major French newspaper published a headline my nation will never forget: ‘Nous sommes tous Americains’,” he said in a surprise French-language reference to an editorial entitled “We are all Americans.”

On Saturday, Bush will visit an American cemetery and memorial for World War I and World War II combattants before touring the fort at Mont Valerien, west of Paris, where more than 1,000 French resistance fighters were executed by German troops.

On Sunday, he goes to London for a visit with Queen Elizabeth II and talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

AFP