The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is only just emerging from a profound crisis that strained transatlantic relations to breaking point last year in the run-up to the US-led war in Iraq.

On the face of it, a victory for Bush's Democratic challenger would accelerate the healing process at the military alliance.

The French government has staved off US calls for an international conference on Iraq until after the November 2 election -- a clear sign, observers say, that Paris does not want to play into Bush's hands.

But analysts also say that a dramatic departure for US foreign policy is unlikely if Kerry wins next month. That means US allies will still be counted on for support when it comes to the crunch.

Andre Dumoulin, a researcher at the Belgian Royal Institute of International Relations, said a victory for the Massachusetts senator would signal "a change of style, of rhetoric, but less of ideology".

Kerry has set out his foreign-policy stall by saying he would adopt a more multilateral approach than Bush.

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father, former president George Bush, has angrily attacked US unilateralism under his old boss's son.

He told Thursday's Financial Times that US engagement with the United Nations and NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq was "as much an act of desperation as anything else... to rescue a failing venture".

At talks in Romania last week, Washington persuaded its NATO allies to consider ways to merge an Alliance-run peacekeeping operation with a US-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan.

The agreement came despite deep reservations from France and Germany, which also held out for a long time before conditionally relenting to US calls for NATO to expand a training mission in Iraq.

Paris and Berlin, which most bitterly opposed last year's invasion of Iraq, agreed to take part in training Iraqi troops, but only outside Iraq itself.

In a sense, therefore, a Kerry administration would be able to work on ground already laid by Bush in cajoling European allies into line.

But there are no guarantees that Kerry could count on European support for a broader multi-national coalition in Iraq to relieve the strain on US forces.

Germany has sent out conflicting signals over whether it might be prepared to commit its soldiers to Iraq.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has slapped down hints from his defence minister that Berlin could send troops, prompting a telephone call from US Secretary of State Colin Powell to his German counterpart for clarification.

France, for its part, has maintained a studied indifference to the prospect of a new incumbent in the White House.

But a President Kerry would, presumably, be able to come to Europe on a wave of goodwill -- opinion polls suggest an overwhelming number of Europeans want Bush out.

That spirit of post-Bush bonhomie, however, could even pose problems for some European capitals.

If the new US leader comes asking for military backing, "it will be more difficult to say 'no'", one European diplomat said.

Still, Kerry would mark a clean break from the insults and mistrust that have characterised the past four years of transatlantic relations.

"I believe that the lesson of Iraq is that the United States needs its allies, including France and Germany, and that we can't continue to talk of 'old Europe' and 'new Europe'. That's in the past," said Fraser Cameron, director of studies at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.