Hillary the European gets it right in Brussels

Mar 7, 2009, 12:37 GMT

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets after her visit to Ataturk\'s Mausoleum in Ankara, Turkey on 07 March 2009. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Ankara for talks with Turkish leaders aimed at improving ties between the two NATO allies that were hurt following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. EPA/KERIM OKTEN

Brussels - If Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted proof that her first official visit to Europe as the United States' top diplomat was a success, she could not have asked for much more than this.

'What you said could have been said by a European,' Hans-Gert Poettering, the silver-haired German leader of the European Parliament, told her after an hour-long question-and-answer session on the state of EU-US relations.

There could be no higher praise from a man whose entire institution is founded on the idea that it is good to be European.

And it summed up a 48-hour visit in which the former first lady and senator, time and again, said the kind of things Europeans have long dreamed of hearing from US diplomats.

'We couldn't do better,' the EU's top diplomat, Javier Solana, said after a formal dinner with Clinton on Wednesday evening, in a phrase that summed up the diplomatic reactions to the visit.

In those 48 hours, Clinton attended a dinner with European foreign ministers, spent a day with NATO counterparts, and debated the EU-US relationship with a group of young interns in the European Parliament and with the bloc's top diplomats in the council of EU member states.

Throughout the visit, and on issues ranging from defence to climate change and human rights, her speeches seemed calculated to win over European states alienated and embittered by the policies of former president George W Bush.

'We must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest ... I don't think you punish Russia by stopping conversations with them,' she said in NATO as the alliance agreed to re-open a formal dialogue with Moscow.

That must have been music to the ears of German, French and Italian diplomats, who have pushed for talks to resume ever since NATO froze them in August to protest Russia's invasion of Georgia.

The US has 'certainly been negligent' in its approach to climate change, while 'we have not done enough' to prevent the spread of AIDS, Clinton said in the parliament.

That admission is sure to delight EU diplomats and NGOs, who have long accused Bush of failing to act on either issue.

Above all, she said that her country was committed to 'listening, consulting and working in concert to deliver smart solutions to our shared challenges.'

That pledge, delivered word for word in the headquarters of both NATO and the EU, was an instant hit with European diplomats who have long complained that Bush's US simply did not listen to them.

The new US approach is a 'fresh wind,' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

It was accompanied by a judicious dose of outright flattery which can also have done Clinton no harm in European eyes.

The EU is a 'miracle' and a 'grand experiment,' NATO is 'of great importance' to the US, to Obama and to Clinton personally, and the US leadership 'believe in a strong NATO working together with a strong EU,' she said.

The US charm offensive has already borne fruit in the pan-European scramble to invite Obama to European capitals - as evidenced by summits with him in London, the French town of Strasbourg, Prague and potentially Brussels in the first week of April alone.

And as Europe's diplomats bask in Clinton's ability to say what they have long wanted to hear, just one question remains: will they, in turn, come out with the right answers when the US puts its own requests on the table?