A leading Republican says President George W. Bush is "mesmerised" by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, and that the Bush administration's recent co-operation with the United Nations and Nato in Afghanistan and Iraq is a desperate move to "rescue a failing venture".

Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser and close collaborator of former president George H. W. Bush, told the Financial Times that the US administration's "unilateralist" stance had contributed to the decline of the transatlantic relationship.