President Bush's invitation to his French counterpart Jacques Chirac to dine together in Brussels tonight was announced three weeks before the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated on February 14th.
But Hariri's death and the question of how to force Syria out of Lebanon are sure to dominate the presidents' dinner conversation.
French and US interests converge in Lebanon.
For Mr Chirac, Hariri's assassination was a personal affront, the savage murder of a close friend. The two met in 1985, when Mr Chirac was mayor of Paris and Hariri was a construction tycoon and philanthropist with business interests in France.
Hariri greatly influenced Mr Chirac's Middle East policy. For as long as Hariri advocated working with Damascus, so did Mr Chirac. It was only last year, when his Lebanese friend grew impatient with Syria's bullying, that Mr Chirac began to change.
Hariri also had the ear of Mr Bush, and engineered the Franco-American rapprochement that led to UN Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for an end to Syria's domination of Lebanon.
In an interview published by Le Figaro at the weekend, Mr Bush said, "Now we have an important opportunity to work for democracy in the greater Middle East and in Lebanon. This is a region where we have shared concerns. President Chirac raised the idea of a resolution in the Security Council to tell the Syrians that they have to leave Lebanon. And resolution 1559 became a reality."
Though neither Washington nor Paris openly accused Damascus of murdering Hariri, both demanded an international inquiry and punishment of the perpetrators. The Syrian-backed Lebanese government yesterday accepted the appointment by the UN Secretary General of the Deputy Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Mr Peter Fitzgerald, to investigate the killing.
Tonight Mr Bush and Mr Chirac will decide on their next step. What will they do if Mr Fitzgerald's report is inconclusive? And how can they enforce UNSC Resolution 1559, which Syria and its Lebanese protégés denounced as interference in internal affairs?
Washington would be more inclined to military action; Paris to diplomatic and economic pressure. And while Washington would like to see "regime change" in Damascus, Paris is likely to be more cautious; in the eyes of Mr Chirac, Iraq has proven that anarchy can be worse than dictatorship.
Mr Bush and Mr Chirac will probably avoid discussing fundamental differences in their world views. Mr Bush admitted to Le Figaro that there had been "a big difference over Iraq" but said that "personally, I feel no bitterness". It was the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder - not Mr Chirac - who suggested on February 12th in Munich that "the dialogue between the EU and the US ... does not correspond to the growing weight of the EU nor to the new demands of transatlantic co-operation". Mr Chirac could not have agreed more.
When the French president delivers his views on the European Union and what it can contribute to US-European relations tomorrow, he may avoid the words "multipolar world", because they irritate Mr Bush intensely. The US president made a pre-emptive strike, telling Le Figaro: "About multipolarity; some say they need a united Europe to counterbalance the United States. Why? When we share the same values and the same goals ... instead of trying to counterbalance each other, why not go forward together in a concerted way, to attain our goals?"