Bush, Sarkozy forges common front against Iran

As part of Bush's farewell tour of Europe, the leaders were expected to coordinate strategy for increasing international pressure on the Iran over its nuclear program and for shoring up NATO's role in the war in Afghanistan.

Likely to top the agenda was Iran's rejection, just minutes earlier, of any suspension of uranium enrichment, after the European Union's top diplomat handed Tehran a world powers' offer of economic incentives to persuade it to stop such work, Reuters reported.

Iran denies trying to build a nuclear bomb and insists its program is strictly for electricity generation.

Bush is dashing through Europe — Slovenia, Germany and Italy came first, and England and Northern Ireland are next — in a farewell tour of ally nations.

Bush revealed the sign of the warming in United States-European relations all week in his travels abroad and the latest of these came in France as he showed that relations between France and United States rebounded since the start of the war in Iraq.

"Recent history has made clear that no disagreement can diminish the deep ties between our nations," he said in a speech, apparently referring to the differences over Iraq.

Even before he was elected last year, Sarkozy worked to mend relations with the United States that were bruised by former French President Jacques Chirac's clash with Bush, especially over the Iraq war.

Keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a key issue of agreement between the two countries even they are split on several other politics.

France and the United States split on whether Turkey should be a member of the European Union, and France differs with the United States on other European issues. And they also have diverging thoughts on Syria's role in Lebanon.

Photo: Reuters