WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande are going all out to make optimal use of the French leader's ongoing three-day state visit to build an alliance that, they say, has been "transformed" in recent years for even closer cooperation and long-term goals.

"NEVER BEEN STRONGER"

"What I do believe, is that the U.S.-French alliance has never been stronger, and the levels of cooperation that we're seeing across a whole range of issues is much deeper than it was, I think, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago," Obama said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Hollande following bilateral talks at the White House.

He identified four key areas on which the two countries have cooperated over the years -- global security, trade and economy, clean energy and global development.

"This level of partnership across so many areas would have been unimaginable, even a decade ago," Obama said. "But it's a testament to how our two nations have worked to transform our alliance."

Indeed, their current collaboration is a far cry from a relationship battered a decade ago by France's refusal to join the Iraq war, an episode that even prompted outraged U.S. lawmakers to rename "French fries" served in Congress's cafeteria as "freedom fries."

In their joint appearance before the press, both Obama and Hollande also tried to play down their areas of divergence -- the National Security Agency's spying program and France's pledge to pull out combat troops from Afghanistan not in sync with other NATO allies.

"I want to reiterate today to the French press that we are committed to making sure that we are protecting and concerned about the privacy rights, not just of Americans, not just of our own citizens, but of people around the world as well," Obama said, as Washington's secret surveillance had sparked outcries in Europe and other parts of the world over breach of trust and intrusion of privacy rights.

"Mutual trust has been restored," declared Hollande, who said that his announcement at a NATO summit in Chicago in April 2012 that France would withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of that year, two years ahead of an American and NATO schedule, was not "an easy decision" to make.