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The 29 members of NATO have a rendezvous this Wednesday in a luxury gulf on the outskirts of London, Watford. And there is little chance to see many smiles on the family photo in the official opening of the summit.
Tuesday's appointments did not bring down the temperature between the leaders of the Alliance, analyzes our special correspondent in London, Anissa El Jabri . There are hardly any signs of relaxation . Like Emmanuel Macron, arrived at the reception of the Queen at Buckingham Palace in Donald Trump's car.
" Let's be serious "
Topics to put flat , between the two men there are many. Especially on the situation in Syria and Turkey. The French president insisted on the " common enemy " of terrorism, but said he was " sorry to say that we do not have the same definition of terrorism around the table ", during a meeting with Donald Trump. He snapped the American billionaire when he said that many jihadists came from Europe and jokingly asked if he wanted to recover.
► What is NATO good for?
The US president did not hide his dissatisfaction with the statements of Emmanuel Macron who judged NATO " brain dead " to denounce his lack of strategic thinking about Russia. It's " very, very bad, " said Donald Trump.
Emmanuel Macron explained that he wanted to give the Alliance a boost, and to denounce the unilateral and uncoordinated decisions of the United States and Turkey that jeopardized the operations against the Islamic State organization in Syria, in which are engaged French forces and other allied countries.
Status quo between Paris and Ankara
The exchange was lively and the little pikes rocked between the two men, as when the American president boasted of having very good relations with his Turkish counterpart.
Behind the usual diplomatic formulas on the meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan , " a useful format ", an " interesting " meeting, there is no visible improvement between Paris and Ankara. " Turkey blocks everything, " says a diplomatic source. Its goal: to get a definition of terrorism that includes Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State organization, if not defense plans for the Baltic States and Poland.
Resumption of the dialogue with Moscow?
Between that and the French willingness to resume " a strategic dialogue " with Russia, that's a lot for Warsaw. The French president is also scheduled to meet the Polish president on Wednesday.
On the eve of the summit, a rare moment, Vladimir Putin reached out to NATO. " Even if, " said the Russian president, " the Atlantic Alliance behaves incorrectly, even rudely, with Russia, we want to cooperate on issues such as international terrorism, armed conflict or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ."
Smoke screen or real will of rapprochement on the part of Moscow? " What Vladimir Putin wants is to send a signal of good will at the 70th anniversary of the organization to express its determination to continue what was relaunched a few months ago. to say the NATO-Russia dialogue, analyzes the researcher Cyrille Bret, professor of geopolitics at Sciences Po. This is a rather heavy trend of the post-Soviet period, the era which opened in 1991 with the dismantling of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. This does not surprise me from the tactical point of view as it is a rather economical way of attributing the good role, the role of the one who wants to discuss, the one who wants to coordinate. And in negative, to bring to NATO another role, that of the organization which has spread gradually to the East, in several waves : 1999 with Poland, 2004 with the Baltic States ; and therefore, to make NATO appear aggressive and Russia as quick as it is to dialogue. "