President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will meet along with their foreign ministers to discuss immigration, EU enlargement and the EU summit in Seville, Spain in June.

Both leaders are fresh from meetings with Bush, who travels from the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, France to Italy later Monday, ending a four-nation European tour aimed at bolstering support for his war on terrorism.

France and Germany have both expressed strong reservations that the United States may be planning to expand its post-September 11 campaign to strike against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

On Sunday, Bush hailed France's cooperation in the anti-terror fight, recalling that Chirac was the first foreign leader to visit the White House following the suicide plane strikes that left some 3,000 dead.

Both presidents were outwardly warm and friendly towards each other, though diplomats said beyond Iraq there were still profound differences between the two countries -- over US farm subsidies, the Kyoto protocol on global warming and policy to the Middle East.

On Friday, French foreign ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said Schroeder and Chirac "wanted to intensify consultations between Berlin and Paris, especially in regards to the 40th anniversary of the Elysee treaty" of 1963, which cemented Franco-German cooperation.

Chirac said in March he hoped both sides would be able to sign a new cooperation pact by January of next year.

Germany and France have frequently differed over the future of Europe, where a debate is currently under way over how to reform the 15-nation EU ahead of its planned enlargement to take into up to 13 new members.

"For me, there is no reasonable alternative" to a more federal Europe, Schroeder said in April, speaking about a more powerful European administration to which EU member countries would have to surrender some of their sovereignty.

France generally has opted for greater European unity through increased intergovernmental cooperation.

But the French desire to relaunch the traditional Franco-German "locomotive" was demonstrated last week when newly sworn-in French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin travelled to Berlin on his first official trip abroad.

The dinners, which first took place in the French Alsatian town of Blaesheim in early 2001 just after the European Union summmit in Nice, had been suspended for the French presidential election campaign.

Top French and German politicians had met since January of 2001 approximately every six to eight weeks, alternating between France and Germany.

SPACE.WIRE