United States Foreign Relations Europe

President Reagan arrived in Venice on Wednesday night for an upcoming economic summit conference, and his national security adviser said the President will press the allies here "for greater coordination, cooperation and support in the Persian Gulf." As Reagan crossed the Atlantic, the subject of the tense waterway through which much of Western Europe's oil must pass loomed ever larger as a key topic expected during the meeting of the major industrial democracies, which begins Monday.

With the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks slowing in the United States, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft plans to travel overseas next week to confer with European officials about the next steps in the expanding international war on terrorism, senior law enforcement officials said Friday.

The United States has begun preparing to fire another big salvo in its trade dispute with the European Community over Europe's move Jan. 1 barring imports of American beef from animals treated with growth-inducing hormones. In a move that could escalate the skirmish substantially, the Agriculture Department has sent a letter to major European governments questioning whether they have been maintaining proper standards in inspecting European meat that is being shipped to the United States.

Until six days ago, the historic friendship between the United States and Europe was enduring a prickly phase. In European capitals, anti-U.S. grumbling was on the rise about issues great and small: the Middle East, the death penalty, genetically modified foods, the perceived aloofness of the Bush administration. Then came the airborne horror in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

President Clinton on Thursday called the Bosnian Serb assembly's rejection of a peace plan a "grave disappointment" and--in a blunt challenge to U.S. allies in Europe--demanded that the international community agree to "act quickly and decisively" against the Serbs.

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, speaking out jointly for the first time since they left office, have issued an extraordinary warning to President Reagan that it would be "a profound mistake" to sign a nuclear arms reduction agreement unless Moscow accepts major changes in the formula now being negotiated. The former President and his chief foreign policy adviser declared that there is "little doubt" a U.S.

"I view this as very, very important diplomacy," President Bush said recently as he unveiled a new mission for Vice President Dan Quayle. The words Bush used to heighten the diplomatic standing of a series of three trips Quayle is to make to Central and South America over the next two months apply equally to the political importance of the trips for Quayle--and perhaps for Bush himself. Details of the journeys are likely to be announced today.

In a flurry of diplomatic maneuvers surrounding the confrontation with Iraq, President Bush has agreed to cancel $7.1 billion in debts Egypt owes the United States for military equipment, is considering a massive new sale of weapons to Israel and may meet within the week with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Administration officials said Friday. At the same time, U.S.

The venerable French newspaper Le Monde, seldom quick with praise for American leaders, said in a Friday editorial that President Bush's command of the allied war effort has made him "the most popular American President since Harry Truman on the day after victory in 1945." The mass-circulation German tabloid Bild Zeitung compared the American President to Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor" who unified Germany in the 19th Century.

A World Trade Organization panel upheld a key U.S. trade law used to impose sanctions against imports from the European Union in disputes over bananas and beef, U.S. officials said Wednesday. In a 350-page report, the WTO panel rejected complaints by the 15-nation EU that Washington's use of the so-called Section 301 trade law to impose trade sanctions violated global trade rules. The panel said aspects of the law challenged by the EU "are not inconsistent" with U.S. obligations under the WTO.

As the full horror of the attacks on epicenters of American economic and military might began to sink in among U.S. allies Wednesday, so did a sense of foreboding.

The Bush administration stands immovably opposed to an international plan to combat global warming, U.S. officials reiterated Thursday, but all other countries key to its success touted encouraging progress toward a treaty that will parcel out targets for reducing "greenhouse gases." The first day of high-level talks among 185 countries in the U.N. Convention on Climate Change reflected both increasing U.S.

Last month, when President Bush showed up in Sweden to explain his reasons for dropping out of a global agreement on climate change, he promised European leaders that he would not interfere with their efforts to carry out the accord. But some European diplomats now say the administration appears to be backing away from that promise and creating obstacles for countries still committed to ratifying the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming.

Taunted by protesters, scolded by the foreign media and scrutinized by fellow presidents and prime ministers, President Bush had a rocky reception when he made his debut in Europe last week. But the issues were not only Bush's positions on missile defense, a global environmental treaty and the death penalty.

Long before the Iron Curtain fell 12 years ago, Western Europeans could get a whiff of what might have been their future. Coal smoke in Prague left soot in a visitor's nostrils. Exhaust-spewing jalopies on the streets of Budapest cast a pall of sulfurous smog over the city. From East Berlin to Bucharest, factories belched so much ambient poison that respiratory ailments were epidemic in industrialized cities.

President Bush said Friday that he intends to tell Russian President Vladimir V. Putin this afternoon that "the United States is no longer your enemy" and urge Russia to be "a partner in peace, a partner in democracy, a country that embraces freedom [and] a country that enhances the security of Europe."

A late-winter squall has blown up in transatlantic relations, one that could escalate into a springtime hurricane. It seems downright paradoxical, but even as the United States and many countries of Western Europe cooperate on seeking an end to ethnic bloodletting in the Balkans and on charting a new course for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, differences over trade are the most damaging in years. "Some people believe this is the new conflict after the Soviets have gone," observed U.S.

For decades, a line connecting London, Paris, Berlin and Rome defined the circumference of the political and economic Europe with which Washington concerned itself. But as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to include an Eastern Europe emerging from the Soviet grip, an underlying theme of the Clinton administration has been to reconstruct the United States' relations with Europe.

President Bush refused to budge Tuesday in the face of fierce European opposition to U.S. policies on missile defense, global warming and capital punishment. Instead he emphasized the common ground between Washington and its allies and asked for a fair hearing during his maiden official tour of the continent. "I believe that people are interested in our opinions," Bush said. "There's so much more that unites us than divides. I refuse to let any issue isolate America from Europe.

President Bush faces the toughest diplomatic challenge of his presidency this week in Europe, where America's allies are increasingly wary of the new administration's determination to plow ahead with its own agenda--ignoring or denying growing differences with its most important partners in security, trade and diplomacy. The 15 predominantly center-left governments in the European Union have expressed varying degrees of alarm over the Bush administration's conservative goals.