Europe's fears of US domination

"This is a mistake of American diplomacy," says Sergei Markov, a member of President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy advisory committee. "The Russian elite's attitude might be called critical mistrust, and I'm afraid Russian mistrust towards the US will be growing in the future." He hopes, however, that "the personal relations between our presidents will remain positive" because "in the unstable political world we are entering, much will depend on leaders."

That hope seems forlorn in the case of Germany, where US officials are furious with Mr. Schröder for what they see as his exploitation of anti-Americanism among voters to win reelection last year, and with France, where Chirac has cast himself as the leader of international opposition to US policy over Iraq.

European leaders still hope that once the war in Iraq is over, they will be able to put their differences with Washington behind them. "The transatlantic relationship is indispensable," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in a recent interview with the weekly Stern. In his TV interview Monday, Chirac was almost blasé about ties with the US. "Our relations and our friendship have deep roots going far beyond isolated events," he said.

Officials in Berlin and Paris point out that Germany and France have more peacekeeping troops in places like the Balkans and Afghanistan than any country but the US. Chirac suggested Monday that French troops would join in the Iraqi reconstruction after a war.

But the time it will take to heal transatlantic relations will also affect NATO's efforts to recast its role in a post-cold war world, observers say. When NATO countries invoked Article V of their charter immediately after Sept. 11, calling the attack on America an attack on them all, European members were disappointed that Bush did not call on NATO for the war in Afghanistan. "That was seen here as a rejection of European solidarity," says Jens van Scherpenberg, an analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Germany this week refloated the idea of NATO taking over peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan, an idea that Washington has rejected. "Changes in transatlantic relations do not mean it is necessary to turn away from the transatlantic alliance," says Mr. Voigt.

The damage done to international bodies by the Iraq crisis has also spread to the European Union, whose 15 members are divided over how far to support the US position, and where hackles have been raised by the way in which Central European candidate countries have backed Washington openly.

"One thing will not be forgotten" when the dust in Iraq settles, predicts Vladimir Handl, a European security analyst with the Institute of International Relations in Prague. "The development of a common European consensus on security and defense policy has been seriously undermined. Political trust has been broken, and relations will have to be repaired before the process can start over again."

• William Boston in Berlin, Fred Weir in Moscow, and Arie Farnam in Prague contributed to this report.

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