U.S. President Bush to take bow on European stage

The White House hopes also for progress on boosting trade, but has low expectations of any major agreements during the trip, expected to be Bush’s last major visit to the continent before his term ends in January.

"I don’t think you’re going to see dramatic announcements," U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters last week.

Still, the U.S. president, who is to leave the White House at 7:00 a.m. (1100 GMT), has a loaded diplomatic plate for the June 10-16 tour, which will take him first to Slovenia for the annual U.S.-Europe summit, then to Germany, Italy, the Vatican, France, and Britain.

Topping the list are Iran’s nuclear program, more aid for war-torn Afghanistan, bringing European allies closer to his climate change views, and breaking down U.S.-Europe trade barriers.

"We are taking action ourselves and urging other countries to increase pressure on Iran. We think that’s an element of the solution," said Hadley, who told reporters the White House still sought a diplomatic solution.

Britain, France and Germany -- backed by China and the United States -- are preparing a fresh offer of economic and diplomatic incentives for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, and Tehran is preparing a counter-offer, said Hadley.

"So well see where we are in terms of negotiations, whether this offers some new promise or not," he said.

Bush, who has explicitly refused to rule out the use of force against Iran, met this week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and media reports said the Israeli leader pushed Washington to plan for a possible strike.

"If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it," an Israeli deputy prime minister, Shaul Mofaz, was quoted as saying in the Yediot Aharonot daily Friday.

With an Afghanistan donors conference set for June 12 in Paris, Bush hopes to pile pressure on U.S. allies to make good on previous aid pledges.

He also aims to sound out his hosts on faltering Middle East peace process, difficult Western relations with Russia, buttressing Georgia in a feud with Moscow, promoting democracy in Lebanon, and engaging Serbia.

The trip comes with the White House banished to the edges of a U.S. media spotlight now shining on the hard-fought campaign to succeed Bush in the November election and with U.S. allies already wondering whether they might get a better deal from the victor.

On climate change, that is a "misimpression," and delaying action now would be "a political miscalculation," the U.S. deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, Dan Price, said Thursday.

"It is highly unlikely that any future administration would be prepared to sign a new climate treaty that did not include binding commitments from the major emerging economies" such as China and India," he said.

Hadley said Bush will push for greater European cooperation with his "major economies process," an approach that critics call a U.S. effort to dodge existing international frameworks for combating the problem and postpone action.

The U.S. presidents visit to Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana comes almost exactly seven years after he met Vladimir Putin there and famously declared he saw the then-Russian presidents "soul" and proclaimed him trustworthy.

This time, Bush and European leaders will look to support Georgia’s claim to its rebel region of Abkhazia, and urge Russia "to reverse its provocative actions" there and in the breakaway South Ossetia region, said Hadley.

The president will discuss enhancing European energy security, amid tensions on the issue between Russian and its neighbors to the west, and aim to press for a solution to a simmering U.S.-European Union feud on European restrictions on U.S. poultry products.

Photo: Reuters