Bush slams Russia on democracy

The president received warm but not enthusiastic applause, a response that two senior Bush administration officials insisted was typical of the restrained European response to politicians' speeches. But some people in the audience said Europeans would be disappointed by Bush's words.

"This is not yet the breakthrough speech they would have hoped for," said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at St. Antony's College at Oxford University who attended the speech. "That speech would have needed much more recognition and support of the EU."

But Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, Bush's host, praised the speech. "He was very open, he was very positive. He was listening to what we have said. It was not business as usual."

Bush himself alluded to what he expected to be a cool European reception compared to that given Benjamin Franklin more than two centuries ago when it was said of Franklin, "there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen" who "did not consider him as a friend to humankind."

Referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush then said, to laughter: "I have been hoping for a similar reception, but Secretary Rice told me I should be a realist."

Europeans appeared so eager to have the president embrace the idea of a new European federation that Verhofstadt went so far as to bring up the history of one of Europe's biggest failures in his remarks introducing him.

"Ten years ago, Europe failed to intervene in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, even though that war was raging just a few hours from here," he said. "We had to wait for you, the United States, to put an end to it. Europe itself hesitated and was too divided to take action."

Verhofstadt added: "That was the ultimate proof that Europe can do little or nothing unless it is united and cooperates. To paraphrase my illustrious predecessor, Paul Henri Spaak, Europe consists solely of small countries. There are some who know it. And there are some who are now beginning to understand — just like James Madison and George Washington understood in 1787 in Philadelphia — that a loose confederation must be forged into a strong union."

Bush met with Verhofstadt for more than an hour on Monday morning, in a meeting that went twice as long as scheduled. In an interview afterward, the prime minister said the two had spent little time on Iraq.

Verhofstadt said his message to Bush was "OK, we still differ on Iraq, so let's not continue to talk about that issue."

Belgium, which bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and has refused to send any military or police forces on the ground there in training missions, recently agreed to help do military training of Iraqis in Jordan, to join Germany's training effort in Abu Dhabi and to commit money to the joint NATO fund to train Iraqi military and police, Verhofstadt added.

The Americans wrested the financial commitments out of the Belgians before the summit meeting to avoid any contentiousness in Bush's meeting with the prime minister.

As part of the new era of good feeling with Washington, Verhofstadt sent two large boxes of expensive Pierre Marcolini chocolates to Bush and his wife, Laura. They were, the prime minister said, a gentle joke about what was ridiculed in Washington and elsewhere as the "chocolate summit," an initiative in 2003 by Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg to create a separate European defense identity separate from NATO.

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Contributing: Bob Deans, Cox News Service