MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

PM Brown denies rebuffed requests for a one-to-one meeting with Obama

“Kitchen-talk” with Obama is good enough

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denied Thursday reports of a rift with Barack Obama following reports that Washington repeatedly rebuffed requests for a one-to-one meeting with the US president.

The Prime Minister, in New York for the United Nations, said he and Mr Obama continued to have “the strongest working relationship and the strongest friendship”.

His comments came amid reports that the White House rejected five separate requests for a bilateral meeting during the four days Mr Brown is in the US for the UN and the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Mr Brown said: “President Obama and I have the strongest working relationship and the strongest friendship. I am not only very confident about the strength of the relationship between our countries, I am very confident about the relationship between the two of us.”

Mr Brown said: “I talked to President Obama. I talked to him before I came to the meetings here; I talked to him at the meetings. I had a long talk with him after Monday's meeting. We are meeting today, we are chairing two meetings. The special relationship is strong and strengthening. And it's strengthening because there is a common purpose.”

He went on: “We are dealing with exactly the same challenges, and we see things in very similar ways. We are about to make quite big changes to the way the international community operates to deal with these problems, and that is US and Britain working more closely together than ever.”

Downing Street and the White House engaged in a damage limitation exercise after the reports of a rift emerged.

Mr Brown was apparently able to snatch some private “face time” with Mr Obama only in a kitchen during a dinner with other leaders in New York.

The White House released a statement dismissing suggestions of a snub as “absurd” and describing relations between the two men as “terrific”.

“Any stories that suggest trouble in the bilateral relationship between the United States and UK are totally absurd,” a spokesman said. “We would add that President Obama and Prime Minister Brown enjoy a terrific relationship, they speak regularly on a range of the most difficult challenges facing our two nations, and meet frequently.”

Apparently the rift was triggered by the Lockerbie incident. US President Obama voiced his disappointment directly to UK PM Gordon Brown over the release of the Lockerbie bomber who arrived in Tripoli to a hero’s reception.