Free Republic

One of the early calls that Vladimir Putin took following his expected victory in the Russian presidential election last weekend was from Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. He congratulated Putin on his success and invited him to visit Islamabad in September which the Russian leader accepted, according to newspaper reports citing an official statement. It would be the first visit by a Russian head of state to Pakistan which stood on the other side of the Cold War, peaking in its emergence as the staging ground for the U.S. campaign to defeat the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. It’s...

LONDON (AFP) - France and Britain vowed Thursday to turn their "entente cordiale" into an "entente amicale", working together on issues from tackling the global credit crunch to fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking at a Franco-British summit in London, agreed to hold more regular meetings to coordinate policy. "We will turn the 'entente cordiale' into the 'entente amicale'," said Brown, referring to the 104-year-old "cordial relationship" that has been strained in recent years, notably over Britain's participation in the 2003 Iraq war. "We believe that working together France and...

LONDON (Reuters) - The French and the English once settled their bloody differences on the battlefield. That evolved into a love-hate relationship based on mutual mistrust with the French mocking "les rosbifs" and the English lampooning "the frogs." But now, with interdependence reigning supreme in an ever shrinking global village, the entente could not be more cordiale as Queen Elizabeth prepares to welcome France's flamboyant new President Nicolas Sarkozy to Windsor Castle on Wednesday. Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac was renowned for his testy clashes with former British leader Tony Blair. He said scornfully of the British "you can never trust...