NEW YORK – Gordon Brown insisted yesterday that he enjoyed the “strongest friendship” with Barack Obama as he was forced to fend off reports of a rift with the US president.
The British prime minister was heading for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, confident that he was close to securing agreement on a British-inspired plan to prevent future economic crises.
However, his final day in New York, where he was attending the United Nations summit, was dominated by reports that the White House had snubbed five requests for a bilateral meeting with the president while Mr Brown was in the United States.
The claims came amid continuing tension over the release from a Scottish prison of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, to the fury of the Americans.
Mr Brown was said to have resorted to striking up a conversation with Mr Obama as they walked through the UN kitchens. He insisted the UK-US “special relationship” remained intact – pointing to his shared work with the president on a range of issues, including nuclear non-proliferation, the international economy, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“President Obama and I have the strongest working relationship and the strongest friendship,” he told reporters. “I am not only very confident about the strength of the relationship between our two countries, but I am very confident about the relationship between the two of us.” The two men were later photographed after the Security Council sharing a joke.
Speaking at the Security Council yesterday, Mr Brown focused on Iran and North Korea.
He told the UN: “We cannot stand by when Iran and North Korea reject the opportunities of peaceful, civil nuclear power and instead take steps to develop nuclear weapons in a way that threatens regional peace and security. As evidence of breach of international agreements grows, we must now consider far tougher sanctions together.”
Former foreign minister Lord Malloch-Brown said British officials were over-anxious to arrange a meeting with Mr Obama. “I don’t know whether they were frantic or not, they should not have been frankly so desperate,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World At One.
“ has had lots of contact with Gordon Brown. I think, very sensibly, his people had other priorities of leaders that he had not seen as much of, and who are equally as important.” Lord Malloch-Brown acknowledged that Megrahi’s release had had an impact in the US. – (PA)