Visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday that he and United States President George Bush will ”step up” pressure to end violence in Sudan’s Darfur province, as the two leaders wrapped up talks.
”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 on 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 on 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 on 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 sceptics 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 spokesperson, 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. — AFP
