Soothing words from Washington at the weekend, aimed at placating Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai after last week's public falling out, follow a familiar pattern. The White House was livid with Gordon Brown over last year's release to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber. But things were patched up once tempers cooled.
Now James Jones, Barack Obama's national security adviser, is claiming US relations with Israel are "fine" despite the furious row over prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to halt Jewish settlement expansion in east Jerusalem, as demanded by Obama. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton was similarly conciliatory at the weekend, extolling the virtues of "strategic patience".
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