Barack Obama met in Paris Friday with the pro-US President Nicolas Sarkozy on a world tour aimed at burnishing the White House hopeful's foreign policy credentials ahead of November elections. His plane, bearing the slogan "Change we can believe in," landed at Le Bourget airport and the Democrat then headed into Paris to be greeted on the steps of the Elysee palace by a smiling Sarkozy.
"Bonjour," said Obama, after he was urged by journalists to say something in French and to pose for more handshakes with the French rightwing leader. He was due to give a joint press conference with Sarkozy before flying to London for the last leg of the tour that has taken him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Germany.
Obama received a rock star welcome from 200,000 cheering fans for a speech he made Thursday in Berlin calling for the world to tear down walls of division and hate. But he was to make no public appearances here, apart from the press conference with Sarkozy at the Elysee, where hundreds of fans waited in the street outside to get a glimpse of the Illinois senator.
The US presidential campaign has riveted France, where many are eager for a change from the administration of George W. Bush and where polls mirror those across Europe to show Obama is the candidate most people want to win.
But there are few votes for any US presidential candidate in being seen to be close to France. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, was pilloried by some conservatives just because he could speak French.
Obama "cannot requite the love that France has for him," said Francois Durpaire, the co-author of a book on the senator from Chicago, because "that would go down badly in the Midwest" states of America. But his visit has sparked much excitement in France, with Le Monde newspaper's front-page headline stating: "Europe is under the charm of Barack Obama."
Sarkozy's election a year ago greatly improved US-French relations, which were poisoned by France's staunch opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq under then president Jacques Chirac. Sarkozy told Friday's edition of Le Figaro newspaper that 46-year-old Obama, whom he met once in 2006 in Washington along with his 71-year-old Republican rival John McCain, was a "friend."
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