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Date Posted: 06:32:28 03/03/09 Tue
Author: pastor lewis
Subject: Brown in US to meet president Obama

Brown in US to meet Obama as No 10 plays down 'snub' claimPM's meeting with president in danger of being overshadowed after cancellation of scheduled press conference
Patrick Wintour and Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 March 2009 13.41 GMT Article history
Gordon Brown steps off the plane after arriving in Maryland. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters


Analysis: Michael White Link to this audio Gordon Brown will today hold nearly two hours of talks with Barack Obama at the White House, but without getting the full-scale press conference with the new president that had been expected by Downing Street.

The prime minister's officials played down the significance of the decision, which has taken some of the lustre off his coup in becoming the first European leader invited to Washington for talks with Obama since his inauguration in January.

Brown, who will use his talks to try to persuade Obama that America needs to swing behind the prime minister's plan to reform international financial regulation and clean up debt-ridden banks, has also been accorded the rare honour of being invited to address a joint session of Congress tomorrow.

British officials said that a scheduled press conference in the Rose Garden was cancelled because it was blanketed in snow.

Instead, the half-hour meeting in the Oval Office will be preceded by a "pool spray" – a few shouted questions from pool reporters during a photo-opportunity with no substantive discussion. The officials did not elaborate on why the event was not moved indoors.

The decision was interpreted as a "snub" in some quarters of the British media, where it was also noted that the president is due to find time for a meeting with the Boy Scouts of America this afternoon.

However, Obama's team pointed out that the busy president did not hold a press conference after meeting the Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, last week.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said this morning: "We always said that a media event was planned and that's what will happen. The White House will confirm details in the course of the day."

Brown will attend around 45 minutes of talks in the Oval Office followed by a working lunch with the president and his officials.

Speaking on National Public Radio in the US this morning, Brown declined to endorse Obama administration projections that economic recovery would start strongly next year, saying "the level of international cooperation achieved in the next few weeks may dictate how quickly we come out of this downturn".

He said: "We are about to put in perhaps the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever seen ... and the biggest cut in interest rates the world has probably ever seen. If we can follow that up with greater international cooperation that can make a big difference to our chances of recovery quickly."

Brown said the global banking collapse needed a global solution. He called for the same standards in banking "of remuneration, accountability, transparency and disclosure all round the world", saying it would lead to a restoration of confidence in banking.

"We need to show the world can come together not only to create a fiscal stimulus, but also to set standards that, if people are not able to meet, we would have a mechanism by which we would say, 'Look, this is not good enough,' and people would lose their status in the international community."

The prime minister wants Obama's support for his proposal that countries that try to stay out of the new regulatory regime ought to be named and shamed on the basis that such secrecy could destabilise the whole financial system.

Asked during the interview whether either Britain or the US had the moral authority to tell the rest of the world what to do, Brown insisted that the world was dealing with a global banking collapse. He sidestepped questions on whether he had allowed too much personal debt to pile up in the UK.

On Afghanistan, he said the war had changed in two respects: the Taliban were now operating over the Afghan border in Pakistan and the coalition forces were being attacked in a guerilla campaign using roadside devices. He said there were as many as 2,000 terrorists operating in Pakistan who used to be in Afghanistan, "so we cannot solve the problem without looking at what is happening in Pakistan".

He said Britain had already increased its troop levels, implying there was no need for a further British increase beyond the 8,200 troops operating in Afghanistan already. He also called for a stronger central government in Afghanistan, and said he was convinced that the Pakistani government was determined to root out terrorism.

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