France: French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11th atrocities by attending memorial ceremonies in New York and meeting high-ranking US officials in Washington.
"Yes, I love Americans," Mr Sarkozy, the interior minister and president of the right-wing UMP party said after awarding honours to New York's police chief and fire department at the weekend. "I love their energy. I love the fact that everything is possible. I love the mobility of American society."
Such unabashed affection for the US is almost unheard of among French politicians, and it is unlikely that Mr Sarkozy's chief rival for France's highest office, the socialist Ségolène Royal, will follow suit.
Sometimes referred to as "Sarko L'Américan", Mr Sarkozy is considered France's most pro-American politician. In an interview with Le Monde, he dismissed as "a cliche peddled by a tiny French elite disconnected from reality" the belief that a candidate must be anti-American to win votes here.
"If, after 25 years of political life, the only serious reproach against me is that I am too close to a country with which we've never been at war, a country alongside which we've struggled in the past to eradicate Nazism and alongside which we are struggling today to conquer terrorism, I can accept that," he said.
Mr Sarkozy praised the US for achieving full employment for the past 15 years and economic growth that is at least one percentage point higher than France's. Half of US Nobel Prize recipients are of foreign origin - a model of integration, he added.
The presidential hopeful met UN secretary general Kofi Annan yesterday and will see US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice today. In a speech at the French American Foundation, he will discuss the 2003 Franco-American crisis over the invasion of Iraq, historical and future Franco-American relations.
"One can hope that Franco-American relations will improve if Nicolas Sarkozy is elected," his diplomatic adviser, David Martinon, said in a telephone interview. "In any case, he doesn't imagine himself in head-on opposition to the US. He considers it was an error to quarrel with the world's leading power, with whom we are involved economically and politically."
In contrast to Mr Sarkozy, all of France's leading newspapers yesterday pilloried Mr Bush's policies of the past five years. "The Bush administration has succeeded in wiping out the immense show of sympathy and solidarity throughout the world after September 11th," said Libération.