Deaglán de Bréadún assesses the likely outcome of the summit in Dromoland Castle
While the praises of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, have been loudly sung because of his success at the Brussels Summit, he has helped to bring off a quieter and more discreet success in another sphere.
Restoring the EU-US relationship was one aim Ireland's European presidency set itself at the start of the six-month term in January, and the coming EU-US Summit in Dromoland Castle will show that this objective has been substantially achieved.
He will get little thanks from the anti-war protesters who now sense that, whatever about getting the Americans out of Iraq, they can at least get George Bush out of the White House.
A joint EU-US statement on Iraq is virtually agreed, looking to the future and the construction of a free, democratic society, rather than harking back to transatlantic disagreements over the wisdom and desirability of going to war.
This new mood of comparative amity was heightened by the recent unanimous adoption of a resolution on Iraq by the UN Security Council. At the summit in Brussels last week, the EU expressed its strong support and goodwill for the process of transition to an indigenous administration in Iraq.
Insiders said UN Resolution 1546 had given both Europe and the US something to work with and that the two sides knew it was in their interests to stabilise the situation in Iraq. There is also a feeling that it is time to stop sniping at one another and move on to next business. In addition, many of the new member-states from Eastern Europe have a more benign attitude to the US, which they see as their liberator from the Soviet yoke, and they would consequently be more in tune with the approach of Tony Blair than, say, Jacques Chirac or Joschka Fischer.
However, US ambitions to spread democracy, American-style, throughout the Middle East region proved a lot more tricky. The Irish presidency was heavily involved in fairly intense transatlantic negotiations to ensure that Arab and Muslim sensitivities and feelings were not excessively ruffled by the Bush administration.
The US is seen and, in many cases, reviled throughout the Middle East as Israel's indispensable ally and fallback. With headlines in the media nearly every other day about clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli security forces, many Arabs look askance at America's proclaimed ambition to bring them the blessings of this type of "democracy".
Many EU countries also have longstanding relationships with their Arab neighbours, going back in some cases thousands of years, and they have mixed feelings about Washington's newfound zeal for "reform" under the Wider Middle East Initiative.
These EU concerns will be reflected in the joint statement on this issue which is due to come out of the Saturday summit. With their penchant for fine phrases, diplomats have agreed that European and US approaches to the Middle East are "complementary but distinct".
Terrorism is a global rather than regional issue. Here the two sides cannot afford any substantial disagreements lest they provide an opening to the common enemy. The EU, steered by the Irish presidency, has secured recognition for the view that terrorists are made, not born, and that the roots and circumstances of terrorism must be taken into account and dealt with if the threat is to be removed.
This is the kind of thinking the Americans are loath to entertain, for fear of implying that terrorists deserve the slightest measure of sympathy or understanding. But Mr Ahern pointed out at the European Parliament earlier this year that any physician will tell you it is necessary to treat the causes as well as the symptoms of a disease.
Joint statements are in readiness on economic, technical and other issues but perhaps the biggest Irish effort has gone into securing a joint commitment to tackling the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen have worked hard to replace sterility with civility in the EU-US relationship and Saturday will show they have largely succeeded. But all politics is local and it won't cut much ice with voters in Birr or Drumcondra.