President Sarkozy is proclaiming a new French bond with America today in a speech to Congress that is also meant to show France is back as a power in Europe and the world.

The first Washington trip by "Super-Sarko" opened with a festive White House banquet last night that underscored the warming of the Franco-American climate since the Americophile reformer succeeded Jacques Chirac in the Elysee Palace last May.

"I have come to Washington to bear a very simple, straightforward message," said Mr Sarkozy. "I want to reconquer the heart of America in a lasting fashion".

Mr Bush, who first met Mr Sarkozy when the then Interior Minister dropped into the White House for a hand-shake two years ago, made the unusual effort of welcoming him in Texas-accented French: "Bienvenue à la Maison Blanche".

That would have been unthinkable in the chilly years after Mr Chirac fell out with Mr Bush over Iraq and tried to lead a global coalition to stop the 2003 invasion. When Mr Bush passed through Paris in 2004, he ordered a US journalist to stop speaking French. No French leader has visited Washington since 2001.

Mr Bush told Mr Sarkozy: "France and the United States can meet great challenges when we work together, Mr President. You and I share a commitment to deepen the co-operation of our two republics - and through this co-operation, we can make the world a better place."

Mr Sarkozy is steering a fine line between his emotional fondness for the USA and his desire to assert French interests that still differ in many fields from Washington's. He is also being careful to allay suspicions at home that he risks replacing Tony Blair as "Bush's European lapdog".

The French President drew laughter in the White House with a joke, that he was proof that "you can be a friend of America and win an election in France".

"Sarko the American", as opponents called him in the election campaign, has dropped Mr Chirac's "multipolar" doctrine in which Europe is supposed to act as a counter-force to an imperial USA. But he is critical of US behaviour on several fronts, particularly trade and the low US dollar. "A strong economy should have a strong currency," he said in Washington. "You don't need a dollar too weak; your technology, your know-how is enough."

Mr Sarkozy has moved Paris closer to Washington on the Middle East and Iran's nuclear programme. But he holds the view, shared by the great majority of the French, that the Iraq invasion was a disastrous mistake.

Last night he paid emotional tribute to America's response to the attacks of 2001. "On 9/11 terrorists thought that they had brought, or they could bring America to its knees. And I will tell you that, seen from the French perspective, never has America seemed so great, so proud, so admirable as on 9/11."

Mr Sarkozy, who visited the Kremlin last month, sees his speech to Congress as the ultimate mark of his arrival as world statesman. He and the Americans are drawing heavily on that evergreen symbol of Franco-US friendship, the Marquis de Lafayette. In 1824, the French adventurer who helped George Washington to throw out the British became the first foreigner to address Congress.

Lafayette, who was born 250 years ago, was a close friend of Washington. Mr Bush is accompanying Mr Sarkozy to Washington's mansion at Mount Vernon in Virginia, this afternoon. Unlike Lafayette, Mr Sarkozy speaks only very broken English. His US addresses have all been in French.

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