President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday worked to patch up the “special relationship” between London and Washington as the leaders sidestepped political minefields over the BP oil spill and the Lockerbie bomber.
After their first White House talks, the leaders pledged fealty to the special relationship between Britain and America, and sought to highlight a personal connection as they met jointly with reporters.
In fact, the visit appeared planned by both sides to ensure that the first real chance for the two to bond — after brief previous meetings — was not spoiled by political rows neither could control.
Obama hosted Cameron for talks in the Oval Office, served a lunch of wild striped bass, and gave his guest a tour of the White House living quarters. Cameron even remarked on the Obama daughters’ tidy bedrooms.
The US leader also sought to get around a row over a gift of American movies on DVD to Cameron’s predecessor, Gordon Brown. He offered a framed and signed colour lithograph titled, “Column with Speed Lines” by Ed Ruscha, one of the most influential American artists of the 20th-century Pop Art movement.
First Lady Michelle Obama also gave Samantha Cameron — expecting a child in September — a gift basket including a baby blanket.
Cameron had arrived in Washington amid signs that his visit could be overshadowed by still simmering political fury in the US over a mass casualty terror attack two decades before he took office.
Scotland’s devolved government last year released Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi — the only man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing — on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
But al-Megrahi, convicted over the downing of the Pan Am jumbo jet that killed 270 people, is still alive in Libya, sparking fury among Americans who believe he should never have been released.
Cameron’s strategy was to forcefully condemn the release of al-Megrahi, and to offer sympathy to enraged Americans. But he also rebuffed US calls for a British government inquiry.
“I said this a year ago … it was a bad decision, it shouldn’t have been made,” Cameron said in the East Room press conference with Obama.
However, he added, “I don’t need an inquiry to tell me what was a bad decision.”
Cameron did tell his top civil servant to go back over the paperwork on the decision, and to see whether more should be released.
‘We’re going to break the Taliban’s momentum’
In return, Obama stopped short of calling for an official British government inquiry, stating his own personal anger at the al-Megrahi release, but expressing confidence Cameron could produce the facts of the case.
Cameron also defended British-based BP, following claims by US lawmakers that the energy giant — already a pariah in America over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — lobbied for al-Megrahi’s release to ease business ties with Libya.
“That wasn’t a decision taken by BP — it was a decision taken by the Scottish government,” Cameron said.
The British leader, carefully noting US anger over BP’s role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, said he fully agreed with Obama that BP needed to seal the ruptured well, clean up the spill and compensate victims.
But with an eye on the UK-based firm’s role as a provider of thousands of jobs in the US and British economies, Cameron said the energy giant must be kept “strong and stable”.
Obama and Cameron also paid mutual tribute to US and British soldiers killed in the Afghan war, and insisted their military plan was working.
“We have the right strategy. We’re going to break the Taliban’s momentum. We’re going to build Afghan capacity, so Afghans can take responsibility for their future,” Obama said.
Obama, who mandated a surge of US forces last year, has said he wants to start bringing home at least some troops in July 2011. Cameron wants British combat troops home within five years.
But critics have expressed doubts that the newly trained Afghan army will be in any shape to keep the peace by 2014. — AFP