Monday, November 5, 2007

President Bush is set to welcome three foreign leaders this week, beginning today with a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The two men have much to discuss, particularly Iraq and efforts to eliminate attacks on Turkey by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party. Both subjects were addressed last week in Istanbul, where Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials held emergency meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Tomorrow evening, French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives at the White House for a social dinner and entertainment. Wednesday, he is to address a joint meeting of the House and the Senate.

After speaking to Congress, Sarkozy is set to join Bush for a tour of Mount Vernon, George Washington's mansion. Unfortunately, a special exhibit on Washington's relationship with the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman, is currently on tour. But Mount Vernon does have a replica of the key to the Bastille that Lafayette sent to Washington -- an important symbol, scholars say, of the French role in the American Revolution and the American role of inspiring, in a sense, the French.

In a letter to Washington in 1790, Lafayette wrote: "Give me leave, my dear General to present you with a picture of the Bastille, just as it looked a few days after I had ordered its demolition, with the main key of the fortress of despotism. It is a tribute, which I owe, as a son to my adoptive father, as an Aide-de-Camp to my General, as a Missionary of liberty to its Patriarch."

Bush will end the week by playing host to German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his own country home. Merkel is the first German leader invited to Bush's Crawford, Tex., ranch. The visit may offer a chance to serve Texas barbecue, or at least attempt to return a favor in culinary adventures. In July 2006, when Bush visited Merkel in Trinwillershagen, a small village near the Baltic Sea, the pair dined on barbecued wild boar.

Definitely missing from the menu: "No back rubs." Bush made that point clear in January when Merkel visited the White House, in a playful reference to his having surprised the German leader with a quick shoulder squeeze at the G-8 summit in the summer of 2006.

He said during that January visit that he listens to Merkel "a lot. She has got a lot of wisdom. I don't know if this helps her or hurts her for me to say this, but nevertheless, my consultations with Angela are very productive and very important."