American Vice President Kamala Harris stressed that she was so happy to be in Paris at the start of her visit.

For four days, conciliatory gestures are on her program in the French capital.

"I look forward to many fruitful conversations to strengthen our strong relationship even more," she said.

The background to the American charm offensive is the severe diplomatic crisis with which France reacted to the announcement of a new security alliance for the Indo-Pacific (AUKUS) between the United States, Australia and Great Britain.

"Clumsy" behavior

Michaela Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian complained about a "stab in the back" because France was excluded from AUKUS.

Since then, the American government has not saved up with conciliatory gestures.

After a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome, American President Joe Biden said that the United States had been clumsy on this matter.

Biden had gone to the Villa Bonaparte, the French embassy at the Vatican, to speak with Macron.

Harris does not lack in gestures with which the offended French are to be made conciliatory.

The length of her stay in the French capital alone - four days and five nights - testifies to the appreciation, said the newspaper Le Figaro.

Before meeting President Macron on Wednesday afternoon in the Elysée Palace to discuss current international issues, the Vice President visited the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The research facility has come under fire for failing to develop a vaccine in the pandemic. It gnaws at the French self-confidence that the research location Germany is preferred by French researchers like the chemistry Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier.

The discoverer of the gene scissors CRISPR has fueled the debate about why basic research talents prefer to migrate to other countries.

During her visit to the Pasteur Institute, Harris praised the outstanding research collaboration with the USA and said: "Some of the most important scientific discoveries, whether on rabies, AIDS, breast cancer or mRNA, have been made here in collaboration with French scientists."

Tribute to fallen American soldiers

She knows exactly because her mother Shyamala Gopalan was researching breast cancer at the Pasteur Institute in the 1980s.

On Tuesday evening, she met a researcher who had worked with her mother, who died in 2009.

This Thursday, Harris wants to open the commemoration ceremony for the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918 at Macron's side at the Arc de Triomphe.

She will also give a speech at the subsequent International Peace Forum on the topics of artificial intelligence, digitization and the fight against fake news and threats against the press.

On Wednesday afternoon, Harris visited the American military cemetery in Suresnes near Paris to pay tribute to the fallen American soldiers.

In 2018, there was resentment when President Donald Trump in Paris canceled his memorial visit to an American military cemetery at short notice, ostensibly because it was raining.

Harris complied with President Macron's request on Friday and attended the Libya Conference in Paris.

She travels back on Saturday.