Visiting US President Presidents George W. Bush was greeted by protesters during his week-long tour, but the US president and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac on Sunday played down the anti-US demonstrations.
"Hundreds of people made signs at me along the streets in Berlin," said Bush at a joint press conference here with Chirac following their two-hour talk, at which a press question raised is" Whether demonstrations are proof of the feeling in Europe that the US imposes too much of its own stands upon other nations in the world?"
As Bush landed here for a 24-hour stay -- his first official visit to France, about 4,000 people gathered in downtown Paris on Sunday afternoon, protesting against Washington's policies on terrorism, trade, the Middle East and environment.
They were left-wingers, anti-globalization activists, pacifists,human rights activists and environmentalists.
Last Wednesday, Bush's trip in Berlin, the German capital, was also overshadowed by street protests that grouped more than 10,000 activists.
"These demonstrations are totally marginal and must not be represented or interpreted as a natural antipathy from the part ofthe Europeans towards the American people or towards the United States," said Chirac.
"We have divergences of opinions on this or that point, which is normal...But the shared common values between the Europe and the US consist of the essential," the French president said.
New demonstrations awaits Bush on Monday when he attends a ceremony honoring US veterans at the small town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise and visits the US war cemetery overlooking a World War IID-Day landing site in Normandy, north France.
Some 15,000 Americans landed there 58 years ago to join some fiercest battles of the anti-Nazi war on the European continent.
A coalition of French left-wing parties and associations has called for anti-Bush demonstrations in the Normandy city of Caen and Paris on Monday.
( May 27, 2002)
