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Bush, Brown agree to boost pressure to end Darfur tragedy
By Phil Hazlewood
AFP
CAMP DAVID, Maryland
Petroleumworld.com 07 31 07
Visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday that he and US President George W. Bush will "step up" pressure to end violence in Sudan's Darfur province, as the two leaders wrapped up talks here.
"I've agreed with the president that we step up our pressure to end the violence that has displaced two million people, made four million hungry and reliant on food aid, and murdered 200,000 people," Brown told a press conference at the US presidential retreat.
"We're agreed on expediting the UN resolution for a joint UN-African Union peace force. We're agreed on encouragement for early peace talks, a call to cease violence on the ground, an end to aerial bombing of civilians, and support for economic development if this happens and further sanctions if this does not happen," said Brown.
Bush and Brown met for a second day Monday, with discussion on forging the way forward in Iraq also expected to dominate the talks.
The new British prime minister, on his first official US visit one month after taking power, also was expected to try to secure movement on stalled world trade talks.
But the divisive issue of Iraq loomed large as the two men prepared to sit down to what aides described as "wide ranging" discussions at the presidential retreat of Camp David in Maryland.
Despite challenges, the close relations between Britain and the United States will "strengthen" in coming years, Brown added.
"The United Kingdom and the United States work in a partnership that I believe will strengthen in the years to come," said Brown.
Bush and Brown had a one-on-one breakfast meeting, after which they met with a wider circle of participants, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The British premier in a US newspaper editorial Monday hailed the shared ideals that unite the two nations.
"Our Atlantic partnership ... is anchored in shared ideals that have for two centuries linked the destinies of our two countries," he wrote in an essay in The Washington Post.
"This partnership of purpose matters now more than ever," he wrote.
Even before arriving at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington Sunday, Brown moved to quash speculation that he seeks to distance his administration from the White House, describing himself as an "Atlanticist" and a "great admirer of the American spirit of enterprise and national purpose."
"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 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 Britain's position had not changed.
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.
And 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.
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.
On Darfur, Brown said Bush had agreed to "step up" pressure to end violence in Sudan's Darfur province.
"I've agreed with the president that we step up our pressure to end the violence that has displaced two million people, made four million hungry and reliant on food aid, and murdered 200,000 people," the prime minister said.
"We're agreed on expediting the UN resolution for a joint UN-African Union peace force," he said, adding that the goal of the intervenion was an end to violence on the ground and support for economic development, but also further sanctions if a peaceful transition fails to materialize.
AFP 30 1637 GMT 07 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All rights reserved.
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