George W. Bush at Dromoland Castle, Ireland. (AFP)

Newmarket-on-Fergus (Ireland), June 26 (Reuters): President George W. Bush declared an end today to western rifts over Iraq but won little concrete in his appeal for European military help against insurgents.

“The bitter differences of the war are over,” Bush told a news conference, which was delayed by anti-American protests staged around the lightning US-EU summit in Ireland.

Fenced off from his detractors by 2,000 soldiers and 4,000 police — a third of the Irish security forces — Bush holed up in a picturesque western Irish castle with European Union leaders ahead of a Nato summit in Turkey next week.

The Americans see a EU-Nato commitment to train Iraqi police as proof old enmities are over. Diplomats fear it may be simply the lowest common denominator the two sides can live with.

“Nato has the capability and I believe the responsibility to help the Iraqi people defeat the terrorist threat that’s facing their country,” Bush said. “The faster the Iraqis take over their own security needs, the faster the mission will end.”

Protesters were kept well away from 16th-century Dromoland Castle as Bush met Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

Ahern stressed the need for transatlantic unity four days before Washington cedes control of Baghdad to an interim government, a handover preceded by a surge of deadly attacks.

“It is vital that we move forward together in the coming days as the transfer of sovereignty approaches,” he said.

Bush’s message to Europe is that the international community must stand together on Iraq, where a car bomb killed one and wounded 40 today as insurgents kept up a bloody drive to derail Iraq’s transition to an interim government.

In a reference to the US abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, a joint US-EU statement stressed “the need for full respect of the Geneva Conventions”, mirroring European disquiet voiced by Ahern over prisoner rights in Iraq.

Nato leaders, including Bush, meet on Monday and Tuesday and are expected to formalise an agreement in principle to help train Iraqi security forces, far short of the original US goal of having Nato troops help with security. The joint EU-US statement stressed points of transatlantic unity in Iraq after a war that has split the West bitterly.