MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama praises US/UK “special relation”; Brown in Congress

PM Brown and Pte. Obama

President Barack Obama said Tuesday the US-UK “special relationship will only get stronger”, after holding talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It was “not just important to me; it's important to the American people”, he said told reporters in the White House.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the meeting had a "very different feel" to those between predecessors Tony Blair and George W Bush. Mr Brown is the first European leader to meet the newly installed president. On Wednesday he will also become the fifth British prime minister to address Congress, when he is expected to warn against turning to protectionism as a response to the downturn. Asked earlier about the economy, Mr Brown told US National Public Radio: "This is a global problem. It needs global solutions. "We need to show the world can come together, not only to have fiscal stimulus for the economy but also to set standards that, if people are not able to meet, we would have a mechanism by which we would say 'This is not good enough' and people would lose their status in the international community." Mr Brown, who will host a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) developed and emerging economies in London on 2 April, said there was a "general understanding" of the need to be far better at dealing with cross-border supervision and flows of capital. He added: "This is a banking crisis, so we've got to go to the roots of it and we've got to clean up the banking system. "The level of international cooperation, what we can do together, will in one sense dictate how quickly we can come out of this downturn." Downing Street dismissed suggestions that the visit had been downgraded by President Obama after it emerged there would not be a formal joint press conference. A White House spokesman said there was a need to ensure "there are some financial rules of the road so that we don't find ourselves in the same position a few years down the line. And I think those are the topics that are likely to dominate both the meeting and the working lunch that they'll have." The two leaders were also expected to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Brown's address to Congress is expected to compare the battle against the global recession to the fight against European fascism in the 1940s. Former assistant secretary of state James Rubin said one of the current fears was protectionism. He said: "Everyone who's an international economist is worried about this sort of thing. But everyone who's a politician knows that people are going to have to take care of their own in a time of crisis. "That doesn't mean there isn't going to be plenty of trade and plenty of international economic cooperation. But when you have a crisis like this, people have a tendency to look first to their own constituents." The EU and Canada have warned that a "buy American" clause in the US economic recovery package could promote protectionism. It seeks to ensure that only US iron, steel and manufactured goods are used in construction work funded by the bill - but has included a pledge to respect international trade obligations. Former UK foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said: "The single biggest issue is the issue of protectionism, maintaining the free trade system which has done so much to increase prosperity over the last 30 to 50 years and the President knows that. The President is unlikely to challenge that. "But within Congress you have a large number of congressmen who don't have the responsibilities of government, who are under pressure from constituents and they are the people who have to be influenced, if they can be influenced, by Gordon Brown and his address".