CAMP DAVID, Md. – President Bush and the new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, presented a united front Monday on Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking to dispel suggestions that the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain would deteriorate due to the recent transfer of power in London.
“So everybody’s wondering whether or not the prime minister and I were able to find common ground, to get along, to have a meaningful discussion,” Bush said as he opened a news conference with Brown at the Maryland mountaintop presidential retreat. “And the answer is: Absolutely.”
Brown, a low-key Scotsman who succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister last month, appeared less effusive than Bush – perhaps mindful of the political perils at home of seeming too close to the American president.
While he thanked Bush for his hospitality, he did not discuss their personal relationship and he focused instead on what he described as the shared commitment in Britain and the United States to liberty and human dignity – values, he suggested, that transcend any individual leader.
“Call it the ‘special relationship’; call it, as (Winston) Churchill did, the ‘joint inheritance’; call it, when we meet, as a form of homecoming, as President Reagan did,” Brown said. “The strength of this relationship … is not just built on the shared problems that we have to deal with together or on the shared history, but is built … on shared values.”
The British leader did not hide his differences with the president, describing Afghanistan as “the front line against terrorism.” Bush, by contrast, has frequently described Iraq as the central front in what he calls the “war on terror.”
Brown avoided using the phrase “war on terror” in describing the effort to hunt down and defeat Islamic radicals. He referred to terrorism “as a crime” and “not a cause,” though he went on to say, “there should be no safe haven and no hiding place for those who practice terrorist violence or preach terrorist extremism.”
On Iraq, both leaders sidestepped potential differences, saying they would wait until their commanders in the field report to them this fall before making any decisions on further troop redeployments.
Britain has been steadily drawing down forces since the invasion of 2003 and now has some 5,500 troops in the Basra area.
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