European Diary: In St Petersburg this weekend, leaders from the European Union, Russia and the United States sought to move beyond their differences over Iraq and to let bygones be bygones, writes Denis Staunton
As Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, put it after his meeting with President Bush: "Given all the difficulty of this situation, we were trying to tread very carefully."
Just as the EU leaders were meeting Mr Putin in the Konstantin Palace, however, some of Europe's most prominent intellectuals were calling for a very different approach.
In a series of articles published simultaneously across the continent, such figures as Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida and Umberto Eco called on the EU to establish a fully integrated foreign and security policy which could act as a brake on American power.
Writing jointly in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine and the French daily Libération on Saturday, Habermas and Derrida suggested that the anti-war demonstrations across Europe on February 15th marked an important moment in the development of a European public consciousness. They interpret the demonstrations - the largest Europe has seen since the end of the second World War - as a popular response to the "declaration of loyalty" to Washington by eight European leaders two weeks previously.
"There is no doubt that the power of feeling brought Europe's citizens to their feet. But the war also made Europeans aware of the failure of their common foreign policy, which had been ignored for so long," they wrote.
The EU's draft constitution provides for the appointment of an EU foreign minister who would combine the roles now enjoyed by Mr Chris Patten and Mr Javier Solana. Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, is tipped for the post, but Habermas and Derrida are pessimistic about his prospects of success under present circumstances. "What use is a new office as long as the governments cannot agree on a common policy? A Fischer with a new title would remain as powerless as Solana," they write.
For the philosophers, the only realistic route to a functioning European foreign policy is for a core group of EU states to use the "enhanced co-operation" mechanism agreed at Nice to integrate their policies.
"This would have a magnetic effect that the other members - first of all in the euro zone - would not be able to resist over time. Under the terms of the future European constitution there may not be any kind of separatism. To move ahead is not to exclude. The avant-garde core Europe must not solidify into a smaller Europe; it must - as so often - be the locomotive," they write.
The intellectuals' intervention comes as the EU is developing a security doctrine which will define its interests and identify external threats. Mr Solana is due to present a first draft of the doctrine at a meeting of EU leaders in Thessaloniki later this month.
Habermas and Derrida are clear about how Europe should define its role in the world and how it should respond to the growth of US military power.
"Europe must throw its weight on the scales at an international level and within the UN to counterbalance the hegemonic unilateralism of the United States," they write.
For Habermas and Derrida, a European foreign policy should articulate an alternative vision of co-operation and social justice. They believe that February's anti-war demonstrations showed the potential for creating a European public life and a political debate which can cross national boundaries.
Although Habermas and Derrida are critical of US foreign policy, their language is more restrained than that of the American philosopher Richard Rorty. Writing in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he describes US policy as "a disaster" and says that Europe must "save the world" by developing a new world order.
"The EU will have to show the world a vision for the future that Washington will respond to with scorn. It will have to make proposals for the reform of the UN Charter and the leading role of the UN in a worldwide nuclear disarmament programme. It will have to dream dreams that will seem absurd to the advocates of realpolitik," he writes.