world news  Mending fences  Europeans will be watching and
listening closely when George Bush arrives in the old continent
tomorrow. There is weighty symbolism in the fact that the
president's first foreign trip of his second term takes him
across the Atlantic. Dinner with Jacques Chirac and talks with
Gerhard Schröder will bring him face to face with the bitterest
European critics of the Iraq war. But the message he is bearing
is one of dialogue and diplomacy - the themes that have already
been highlighted by his new secretary of state, Condoleezza
Rice, on her recent fence-mending trip.  The mood on this side
of the pond is warily optimistic. European governments have been
accentuating the positive, faute de mieux, since Mr Bush's re-
election. They recognise sensibly that there is no point going
on about how much they wanted a John Kerry victory. Bush II is
with us all for the next four years and there are some extremely
thorny issues on the global agenda. Best, in that case, to work
out how they can be tac