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PARIS - Europe has watched with relief mingled with caution as Barack Obama has taken a hammer to George W. Bush's reviled legacies on climate change and the self-described "war on terror".
Less than a week after taking office, Obama endorsed measures by US states to help rein
in carbon emissions by cars, named a special envoy to lead the United States back into the global talks on climate change and ordered the closure of the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility and secret CIA prisons abroad.
For European countries repelled by Bush's eight years in office, these are important down payments by Obama for restoring goodwill.
"Europe has gained a strong partner," Czech Environment Minister Martin Bursik, whose country is current president of the European Union, said yesterday after Obama unveiled the first volley of climate measures. "Barack Obama is quickly implementing what he promised. He acts efficiently."
European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said he felt "deep encouragement" that the US had declared a full embrace for the worldwide talks on global warming. Fewer than 11 months are left before the new climate treaty - the most complex and ambitious ever attempted - has to be concluded in Copenhagen. But Dimas diplomatically noted that Obama could only hope to sway events by implementing a tough programme to reduce America's carbon problem.
"Many other countries, like China, cannot see why they should decarbonise their own economies if the richest economy does not also make firm commitments," said Dimas in an open letter to Obama.
The 27-nation EU has led a lonely campaign to defend the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol, abandoned by Bush in 2001. It has also taken the lead among rich economies in tackling future emissions, promising to make a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse-gas pollution by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, coupled to a boost in energy efficiency and renewable sources.
Obama has set the goal of restoring US carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a goal that would have been inconceivable under Bush but is still far less ambitious than the EU's.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, senior director for policy programmes at the German Marshall Fund think-tank in Washington, said this posed a dilemma for European leaders.
"The EU can either look at this charitably, and support the American efforts to achieve a change of course - which are akin to turning a supertanker around 180 degrees - or EU leaders could say, 'we committed to something, America should do the same' and unrealistically expect them to pull even with Europe."
The EU has taken a similarly guarded line with Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay, viewed as an emblem of illegality under Bush and a potent recruitment spur for al Qaeda.
The move was hailed by the Czech presidency as of "great symbolic and practical importance" and a boost to co-operation on security and fighting terrorism.
But an appeal by European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso for countries to "help our American friends" by accepting some of Guantanamo's 245 inmates met with little echo.
At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, efforts to co-ordinate an EU response to this plea failed. Only seven of the 27 countries indicated they might be willing to take in released prisoners, and this would only be case by case, according to a diplomatic source.
France said it was willing to take in selected former captives and Finland said it might host those who had been given refugee status. But Austria flatly ruled out taking anyone in, citing legal problems; Britain said it had already helped out by taking back nine British citizens and promised to accept six British residents; and Sweden pointed out that it had already admitted more Iraq refugees than any other Western countries.
Other ministers sat on their hands, choosing not to declare a position. While clearly sympathetic to Obama, the mood was that America had created the problem of Guantanamo and thus had to deal with it, according to the source.
"Dealing with the actual question of bringing people back from Guantanamo is incredibly complex, legally," the source explained.
"Barack Obama will soon realise that love affairs with Europe require a cautious approach," said the liberal Czech daily Mlada Fronta DNES, warning however that the EU could also pay the price in lost confidence in Washington if its opposition became entrenched.
