British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived late Thursday in Paris for dinner and talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the first stop on the first foreign trip of his premiership, reported the dpa. He was greeted on the steps of the Elysee Palace by a beaming Sarkozy as the pair posed for photos. The discussion with Sarkozy was expected to cover a broad range of issues, from Iran's nuclear program to the war in Afghanistan, as well as the state of the European Union and French-Anglo relations. Cameron was expected to try to assure Sarkozy - and, on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - that Britain was committed to playing its part in helping the overall economic recovery in Europe. However, both Sarkozy and Merkel remain furious at Cameron's early decision as leader of the British opposition to pull his Tory MEPs out of the mainstream centre-right political bloc in Strasbourg. They had warned that he was in danger of isolating his party and diluting his influence at the EU negotiating table. But Downing Street said it was Cameron's aim to establish a "positive and pragmatic" relationship with the two major European partners which have, traditionally, not always been easy. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform (CER), said that - now in government - the Conservative leader was likely to come across as being "much less eurosceptic than people feared." The timing of the visits was especially interesting.
