New French president thrust onto world stage

PARIS -- On his whirlwind first day since winning the presidential election, Socialist François Hollande was set to embark on a crash course in international politics, with a critical visit to Berlin, an invite to the White House, and two top summits already on the agenda.

The leftist who has pledged to buck Europe's austerity trend and NATO's timetable for Afghanistan has virtually no foreign policy experience, and he will have very little time to catch up before he officially becomes France's new president on May 15 -- and must defend his policies to skeptical foreign leaders who worked with defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hollande has said his first act after the election will be to write a letter to other European leaders calling for a renegotiation of a budget-trimming treaty aimed at bringing the continent's economies closer together, a stance that puts him at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Hollande will make his first trip abroad the day after he takes office, to Berlin to meet with Merkel. She was the first international leader to congratulate him, but she made clear he will not have a smooth road, cautioning against hope that the austerity measures could now be renegotiated. "We in Germany, and I, personally, believe the fiscal pact is not up for negotiation," she said.

President Barack Obama has extended Hollande an invitation to the White House ahead of this month's summit of the Group of Eight leading economies at Camp David, Md.

After that, Hollande will attend a NATO summit in Chicago, where he is expected to announce he is pulling French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year. NATO maintained yesterday it expects France to remain committed to Afghanistan despite Hollande's campaign pledge to accelerate the withdrawal.

The G-20 and a European summit lie ahead in June.