WASHINGTON, March 28, 2008 - Sunny skies are ahead for US-France
relations no matter who becomes the next American president, US leaders said
this week as French President Nicolas Sarkozy also vowed closer ties with
Britain.
   The French leader swept his new model-wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to a glowing
welcome on an official state visit to Britain and pledged to put aside
differences that arose over Britain's involvement in the US-led war on Iraq.
   And in the United States, the current president forecast warm ties with
Paris, which has proposed boosting its troop levels in Afghanistan where
France has 1,500 soldiers and Britain 7,800.
   "No question the relationship is changing for the better, and President
Sarkozy gets a lot of credit for that," President George W. Bush said
Wednesday in an interview with foreign media.
   Arizona Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee in the
presidential race to succeed Bush in 2009, also just returned from a trip to
France where he promised to rise above any past bickering over predecessor
Jacques Chirac's opposition to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
   "Our relationship with France will continue improving, no matter who
becomes president of the United States," McCain said in Paris.
   Beyond the emergence of Sarkozy, who was elected last year and has led the
charge for better ties with his anglophone allies, France's commitment to
Afghanistan has vastly improved relations with the United States.
   Sarkozy's announcement in London Wednesday that he intended to propose
boosting French troop levels at a NATO summit next week, received rave reviews in Washington.
   White House hopeful Barack Obama has made bolstering efforts to fight
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban a pillar of his campaign platform. The Illinois

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