Bush meeting Sarkozy on final day of G8 summit

US President George Bush is to meet new French president Nicolas Sarkozy today on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Germany.

Sarkozy is seen as friendly to the United States, sure to be a welcome change from the merciless tormenting Bush received from Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

Sarkozy is one of a couple of new leaders that make Europe a more comfortable place for Bush to be these days – even with the impending departure of Tony Blair, who has been Bush’s most steadfast foreign ally.

It will be their first meeting since Sarkozy’s election, and their second overall – the first was September in Washington.

Bush has said little about Sarkozy.

Asked what he thinks of the new French leader in an interview this week with reporters, Bush said: “I haven’t met him yet – I have met him, excuse me, but not as president.”

French officials said Sarkozy told Bush during a working session yesterday that “quantitative targets” on emissions were not negotiable.

But the agreement on climate change produced by the eight world leaders promises only to consider a goal of a 50% cut by 2050 as one option for tackling global warming.

Instead of adopting that approach, proposed by host Angela Merkel, the leaders came around to Bush’s insistence that a to-be-determined, and not necessarily binding goal be set later, by a wider group that includes emerging economies.

Still, Sarkozy earned the label “Sarko the American” from some in France during his campaign.

Merkel is another place Bush can now look for friendlier ties. She has made it a goal to strengthen relations with the United States. Merkel succeeded Gerhard Schroeder, who had partnered with Chirac in an alliance of unrelenting opposition against the US on the war.

On the final day of the G8 summit, the leaders are focusing on aid to Africa.

Critics say all the nations are lagging on the promises they made two years ago, at the British-hosted summit, to double assistance to the troubled continent by 2010.

The leaders are also holding discussions with China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, all developing nations not G8 members.

From the resort of Heiligendamm in Germany, the president flies to Poland for a quick, three-hour stop.

He will spend the night in Rome.

In Poland, meetings with Polish President Lech Kaczynski at that country’s equivalent to the American presidential retreat at Camp David serve as a bookend to Bush’s trip-opening visit to the Czech Republic.

Bush has chosen the two nations as the sites for a new missile defence system.

That system has been a source of much heated dispute with Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Bush with a surprise counterproposal built around an existing Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than the new defences in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said he would consider it.