PARIS (AFP) - French politicians yesterday said the outcome of the American presidential race should provide an occasion for a reinvigorated relationship between Paris and Washington, but also an impulse for a stronger Europe to counterbalance the US superpower.

"It's a new phase which is starting at a very important moment for the world. Europe is acquiring institutional maturity. Relations between the EU and the US are at a key moment," Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told RTL radio.

"We must try to re-establish American confidence in the European project. The Americans cannot think they can build, direct and inspire the world all by themselves. Our world needs several powers. They are the first among them. But we are also acquiring the elements and the will to be a great power," he said.

Outside government, political leaders were less coy about recognising the likelihood of a Bush second term - a result seen as an out-and-out disaster by some, but by others as a call to action in the cause of European integration.

Opinion polls before Tuesday's election showed as many as 90 per cent of the French public wanting a Democrat win - though the government scrupulously observed protocol by refraining from expressing a preference.

"Many observers believe America's political choices were a result of President Bush. What we see today is that these choices are in fact supported by a majority of Americans," said Francois Bayrou of the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) which is part of Chirac's coalition.

"What that means is that there is great mutual incomprehension between the two sides of the Atlantic. It also means that to face a more determined America, we need a strong Europe.

"If we fail to build a strong Europe and if we continue as now to be a Europe divided, in which some nations go one way and the rest another, then the world will be permanently out of balance," he said.

For the opposition Socialists, party leader Francois Hollande also said that the main lesson of the election was the need for a stronger Europe to put up resistance to an America "trying to impose its vision on the world".

"If we are mere spectators at this historic election... it is because we have not grasped our historic role. And that is a politically strong Europe which is capable of weighing on the destiny of the world. Our future is not the American election, but the European continent," he said.

Commentators said that a second Bush term was unlikely to be a carbon copy of the first, and that after the difficulties of the occupation of Iraq it was possible the influence of the so-called "neoconservatives" in the administration would begin to wane.

"The star of the neoconservatives, who bear so much responsibility for the current situation, should fade in Washington, democratic imperialism should recede, and the appeal of foreign military adventures begin to diminish," said political analyst Daniel Vernet.

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