Will the Bush administration make a fresh start to American foreign policy? United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is obviously willing to mend French-American relations, badly damaged since the rift between the two countries over Iraq.

The time when the former National Security Adviser suggested that America " punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia " for their opposition to the Iraqi war is over.

It is now time to greet the new Secretary of State who, during her first trip to Europe, has given a special status to her stop in Paris.

Her speech at the Paris Institute for Policy Studies (the school for future French elites), her visit to a music school, and the profusion of smiles for photographs were part of a new American operation of seduction.

Shortly after Rice's visit, American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in the southern French city of Nice for a Nato summit. He was also as pleasant as possible to his French hosts.

The day after, he was in Munich for the annual meeting of defence experts, where he called for a collective response to terrorism.

Oddly enough, it was in this very place that two years before he split Europe into two parts: "old Europe" and "new Europe".

The old one was composed of France, Germany, and Belgium, i.e. countries reluctant to go to war.

The new one (in Rumsfeld's view the good one) was composed of the new European Union members and the former Warsaw Pact countries, which were truly pro-American. But this formulation came from the "old Rumsfeld" said the Secretary of Defence. Gone was the hardliner.

Are we dreaming? Is the United States becoming truly dedicated to multilateralism? Will it abide by international laws in the future? Will it promote United Nations primacy?

No, it will not. Even if the world is evolving, America has not reached that point yet. What is certain is that America realised that its own foreign policy led it to a dead-end.

People in the Bush administration can officially celebrate the Iraqi elections, but they are clever enough to realise that nothing has changed. On the contrary, violence has increased.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the Shiite leader, is clearly the winner of the elections and Eyad Allawi, Iraq's pro-American prime minister, obviously the loser, in spite of all the means that the US government had put at his disposal.

Al Sistani made it clear that his goal was to put an end to American military occupation. It would be difficult for the White House to resist such a demand, after having celebrated Iraq's self-determination.

As a consequence, we will be confronted with a new kind of war in Iraq: a war of communication.

In this case, the best hope for Americans would be to find a face-saving solution to explain why they have launched a war in Iraq if the result is giving the power to Shiite religious leaders and transforming Iraq into a test country for terrorists.

Moreover, Americans fear seeing the Kurds going towards secession. The partition of Iraq into three countries between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds is not per se a nightmare scenario for Washington.

But it will lead to serious problems (which is an understatement) with Turkey, and Washington cannot afford to be at odds with Ankara.

If, added to this, we consider the cost of occupying Iraq (Dh293.6 billion a year) and the problem of enlistment that the US Army must cope with (for the first time in years, American Marines failed to reach their goal in terms of new recruits in January) one could easily understand why the United States needs to conduct this "operation of seduction".

When he was secretary of state, Colin Powell described US foreign policy by the following motto: " Multilateral if we can, unilateral if we must ". He meant that multilateralism was only an option among others for Washington.

He also meant that the United States could choose a multilateral path if other partners agreed to its goals, otherwise Washington would go it alone.

This is precisely the opposite definition of multilateralism. Nowadays, Rice and Rumsfeld seem to put things in the following way: " Unilateral if we must [in case there is no other choice available], multilateral if we can [every time it is possible] ".

Nothing has really changed. It is basically the same policy, but now with a smile for a gift.

After having started a fire in Iraq, America needs firemen to extinguish it, and the only firemen available are precisely the ones who were against the first explosion.

Americans understand that they cannot fix the problem by themselves. Winning a war can be done unilaterally, especially if it is done by a military superpower.

But to win peace is another story, which could be reached only in a multilateral way. This is why instead of punishing the states which were opposed to their projects American officials are trying to court them.