By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

Tony Blair (right) at the summit with his foreign secretary

Tony Blair did not bother pretending the deep European fissures that have opened up over Iraq had been repaired in Brussels on Friday.

But there was simply no point, he insisted at the end of the summit, in dwelling on the differences between members, most notably Britain and France.

Neither, however, did the prime minister shy away from what for many lies at the root of the divisions, exposed by rifts on Iraq but caused by something altogether deeper: different views on the transatlantic alliance.

Mr Blair restated his firm belief that this alliance must remain at the forefront of western defence in order to maintain global order and stability.

Once the war was over, there must be an "honest and open and frank debate" on Europe's future relationship with the US.

He described as an "article of faith for me" his view that Europe should work more closely with the US.

For other European leaders, of course, Mr Blair has been working far too close to the US for comfort, his decision to join a US-led war without UN backing being just the latest, most flagrant example.

Folk-hero

The official summit dinner on Thursday evening must have the dinner party from hell for Mr Blair.

He was sat opposite Jacques Chirac, the French president now seen as a spokesman by anti-war populations across Europe for refusing to go along with the US.

While the president's folk-hero status was rocketing, Mr Blair's diplomatic gamble was crashing, unable to attract the UN support he so desperately wanted and leaving him practically isolated at the EU table.

What has particularly outraged Paris is the repeated claims by British ministers that during negotiations for that elusive second UN resolution on Iraq, President Chirac peremptorily ruled out military action "in any circumstances".

What he actually said was he would not accept a war-trigger resolution in any circumstances while UN weapons inspectors were making progress.

The political offensive against France has continued since then, including the pointed release by ministers on Thursday of figures claiming that France exported $212.5m worth of goods to Iraq in the first six months of last year compared to British exports of $27.8m in the same period.

The implication was clear: the French case against war was not the moral one it had made out.

Entente discordiale

Britain has often been seen as a reluctant European - all that Brussels-bashing by Margaret Thatcher, John Major's impossible problems over Maastricht. Tony Blair's election was greeted with a huge sigh of relief, matched by his grand ambition to be "a leader in Europe".

Not that long ago he was even talked of as a future president of Europe.

Now, though, the government is forced to cite the backing of the "new Europe", not-yet-but-soon-to-be members of the EU whenever ministers seek to disprove charges of being isolated.

And meanwhile, President Chirac - in his seventies and facing a corruption probe once he leaves the Elysee - has suddenly emerged as a voice that speaks for Europe carving out its own distinct identity and destiny separate from the "hyperpower" that is the US.

The entente has rarely been less cordiale.

In Brussels, Mr Blair acknowledged that rival European visions of relations between Europe and America had "been exposed in a sense as a problem, as a faultline, in the past few weeks".

These rival visions will have to be resolved if the EU is to develop further in any meaningful way in the future.

But first, with both Paris and London sore and bruised from their clashes of the past few weeks, he knows he must first resolve relations with France.