WASHINGTON – Meeting in Evian, France, for the first time after the Iraq war one year ago, President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac (search) seemed to have put their worst days behind them.
"I know there's a lot of — a lot of people in both our countries wondering whether or not we could actually sit down and have a comfortable conversation," Bush said then. "And the answer is absolutely."
But at this week's NATO (search) summit in Turkey, the fourth time Bush and Chirac met this month, the dialogue between the two presidents appeared anything but comfortable.
Chirac pointedly told reporters that France isn't America's "servant." And when Bush urged the European Union (search) to admit Turkey as a member, Chirac in effect told Bush to mind his own business.
"If President Bush really said that the way I read it, well, not only did he go too far but he went into a domain which is not his own," Chirac said.
And after NATO agreed to train Iraqi security forces, Chirac declared France "entirely hostile" to any NATO presence inside Iraq. The United States and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai (search) also urged NATO to deploy units to help keep the peace during the elections in Afghanistan. Chirac said the force shouldn't be used for "just any old matter."
A senior State Department official told FOX News that however hard a line Chirac maintains in public, however, French officials approach their U.S. counterparts with a "positive attitude," suggesting that the French president's anti-U.S. rhetoric is intended chiefly for domestic consumption in France.
Click on the video box at the top of this story to watch a report by Fox News' James Rosen.
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