PARIS - For Sen. Barack Obama, the response of many Europeans to his potential presidency has been gratifying -- emotional, responsive, replete with the sense of hope he seeks to engender about a more flexible, less ideological America.

European governments and politicians are not so sure.

On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history.

But he was vague on crucial issues of trade, defense and foreign policy that currently divide Washington from Europe and are likely to continue to do so even if Obama becomes president -- issues ranging from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to new refueling tankers and chlorinated chickens, the focus of an 11-year European ban on U.S. poultry imports.

Europeans admire Obama's political skills and welcome his apparent readiness to respect opposing points of view. For many there, that raises the prospect of a sharp break with the policies of the Bush administration, especially in its first term, when the United States chose to ignore the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejected the Kyoto accord on global warming and invaded Iraq, starting a war that some of America's European allies opposed.

"Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world?" Obama asked in his speech, then added pointedly, "Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?" The huge crowd applauded and waved U.S. flags.

"On the positive side, we can expect somebody who reasons the way we do in Europe," said Pierre Rousselin, the foreign editor of Le Figaro, a French newspaper, after the speech. "That said, on climate issues, the economy and world politics, there are still questions. There will be a difference, but very quickly Obama will be faced with concrete questions, like Afghanistan."

Eberhard Sandschneider of the German Council on Foreign Relations said: "The Obama who spoke tonight did not put all his cards on the table." Obama "tried to use all the symbolism of Berlin to indicate that as president he would reach out to Europe," Sandschneider said. "But between the lines he said very clearly that Europe needs to do more," especially on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Europeans are wary about Obama's call for more European money for defense and more soldiers for the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. They worry that he will not alter what they see as President Bush's unbending bias in favor of Israel.

But European leaders are particularly concerned about Obama's positions on trade, which seem to many to veer toward protectionism.

Europe's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, last month urged both Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, to reject "the false comforts of populism" and abandon "the protectionist and anti-trade rhetoric" that dominated the primaries.

Mandelson noted that Obama had pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and had opposed a new trade deal with Colombia. "A crisis of American confidence in globalization," Mandelson said, "could knock it off course."

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