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| Britain |
| Brown 'not snubbed' by Obama at UN |
| 2009-09-25 |
| British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office has rejected reports of US President Barack Obama's slighting of the premier by ignoring his calls for a meeting. In a statement published on Wednesday, Brown's office rejected reports in which UK media accused Obama of 'snubbing' the British premier after Brown's requests to convene an official meeting with the US president on the sidelines of a UN meeting failed to draw a response from the White House. "There were five attempts to set up a meeting and none have come off," British media had earlier quoted an unnamed diplomat as saying. The Downing Street, though, ruled out the claims as being 'completely without foundation', and countered the allegations, saying that the two leaders had a 'number of meetings'. The allegations of Obama's 'snubbing' of Brown stirred media controversy as a number of news outlets underscored the US president's meetings with the Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on the margins of the UN General Assembly convention launched on September 23, while playing down Brown's attempt to portray an 'established' image of UK's traditional partnership with the US. Britain's recent expatriation of the Libyan Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, who blew up a bomb on a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 which left 270 dead, has reportedly undermined relations between Washington and London. However, the British government has remained upbeat about the cross-Atlantic ties and maintains that 'there will be further meetings at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh' between the two leaders. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Unless Obama is play-acting, the freeing of the Lockerbie bomber has nothing to do with it. The UK kept Obambi informed every step of the way and it was done with his approval. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-09-25 11:26 |