Germany: German chancellor Gerhard Schröder will meet US president George Bush in Washington this morning in what is already being described in Germany as his US farewell tour.
After the diplomatic ice age over the Iraq war and the likely change of government in Berlin in the autumn, the low expectations of Mr Schröder's trip were captured in a report headlined "Dead Man Walking", particularly black humour considering the record number of death warrants Mr Bush signed as governor of Texas.
Government sources in Berlin are anxious to talk up the meeting, four months after Mr Bush's visit to Mainz, as "underlining the intensive German-American co-operation".
But the most significant agreement from the meeting in February was best summed up by Chancellor Schröder: "We agreed not to talk about our differences of opinion, just what we agree on." Berlin sources expressed only modest expectations of the meeting, saying talks will take in the Iranian elections, the upcoming G8 summit, and the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, following the death of two German peacekeeping soldiers there at the weekend.
Berlin has abandoned hope in the short-term of convincing the Bush White House to back Germany for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council and has reacted in a cool manner to the US backing of Japan.
"The Japanese are extremely unhappy about this support ... because it will not get a two-thirds majority in the general assembly," said a leading government source in Berlin. "This gift of the US is no real gift but I would go as far to see it as a burden for our Japanese friends."
The same source said Mr Schröder will not irritate Washington by reheating his opposition to the Iraq war in the upcoming election campaign and reject suggestions that this is the cause of Washington's cool attitude to a German seat on the UN Security Council.
"I wouldn't assume a US government would interpret a question like, 'How do we organise multilateralism for the next 20 years?' based on an irritation in one single case with one single head of government," said the official.
German government sources play down the significance of a possible change of government, in stark contrast to observers in the US.
"Schröder isn't a political lame duck, he's a dead duck," Der Spiegel magazine quoted Prof Stephen Szabo of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as saying. "Bush is laughing up his sleeve."