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Bush, Brown to meet at Camp David under Iraq shadow
By Phil Hazlewood
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 07 30 07
US President George W. Bush holds talks with Gordon Brown Monday, with the new British prime minister hoping to secure support for a peace deal on Darfur and movement on stalled world trade talks.
But the divisive issue of Iraq is likely to loom large over proceedings as the two men and their foreign ministers sit around the table for what aides said were "wide ranging" discussions at Bush's Camp David, Maryland, retreat.
Even before arriving at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington Sunday, Brown again moved to quash speculation that he wants to distance his administration from the White House because of lingering resentment over Iraq.
Describing himself as an "Atlanticist" and a "great admirer of the American spirit of enterprise and national purpose", the former finance minister said he had come to reaffirm and even strengthen the so-called "special relationship."
"It is firmly in the British national interest that we have a strong relationship with the United States, our single most important bilateral relationship," he said, hailing shared values and history.
But after he named several Iraq war skeptics to senior ministerial roles, apparent disquiet in London at US foreign policy and no mention of US-British involvement in the Gulf in Brown's pre-visit statement, doubts remain.
Brown's spokesman Michael Ellam told reporters in London Sunday that Iraq, which controversially united Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair in military action in 2003, would still be up for discussion.
And he rejected a report in The Sunday Times newspaper that Brown's foreign policy adviser, Simon McDonald, had sounded out the White House about a possible withdrawal of Britain's 5,500-strong force from southern Iraq.
Ellam said McDonald had made it clear to US foreign policy experts that Britain's position had not changed.
A report this month from a commission on Iraq chaired by the former international envoy to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, called for British combat operations to end and troops to be pulled out, regardless of the security situation.
At the same time, Bush is under pressure to change course in Iraq, including from within his own Republican party, but maintains that a "surge" of 30,000 extra US troops launched in January will help stem the bloody tide of violence around Baghdad.
There are also indicators of a shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, where Britain's 7,000-strong contingent -- soon to rise to 7,700 -- is battling forces loyal to the country's former hardline Islamist rulers the Taliban.
Brown is accompanied on the trip by his Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who last week visited British troops and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his first major overseas visit in the post.
At Camp David, the British leader wwas greeted by a color guard of three Marines bearing the US flag and three Navy sailors bearing the Union Jack.
On Darfur, aides to Brown said he is seeking support from Bush for a five-point plan for resolving the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, which was agreed at a meeting last week with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It includes calls for a new United Nations Security Council resolution for a 19,000-strong hybrid African Union-UN force, an immediate ceasefire, restarting the peace process and an economic aid package.
On the WTO talks, Ellam said Brown wants world leaders to remain "fully engaged" on liberalizing trade and had talked with the leaders of Brazil, China, India and South Africa recently, urging them to give it "top priority."
Talks are in deadlock but chief negotiators have said they intend to raise the pressure for a compromise deal in September on removing trade barriers.
"We're actually quite close, in principle, to a deal," said Ellam.
| Brown was to meet Republican and Democratic party leaders from the US Senate and House of Representatives Monday before heading to New York to see UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and address the assembly Tuesday.
AFP 30 0722 GMT 07 07Copyright© 2007 AFP. All rights reserved.
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