Monday, 21 May 2007CAIRO ÔÇö The Bush administration is preparing for the end of the honeymoon it enjoyed with 10 Downing Street under outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair, with prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown expected to take a new policy direction, especially over Iraq.
"There is a sense of foreboding. We don't know if he will be there when we need him," one senior administration official told The Daily Telegraph on Sunday, May 20.
"We expect a gesture that will greatly weaken the United States government's position," he said, referring to a possible British withdrawal from Iraq.
US President George W. Bush has been told by White House officials to prepare himself for such an announcement during Brown's first 100 days in power.
Nigel Griffiths, a close ally to Brown and the former deputy leader of the House of Commons, fueled Washington's fears recently when he said that Britain should pull out of Iraq "as soon as is practicable."
Bush's aides fear that Brown will boost Democrats' demands for a withdrawal timetable and encourage wavering Republicans to defect.
"If Gordon Brown pulls British troops out of Iraq it will severely undercut the US," Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told the Telegraph.
"The anti-war Left in Washington is looking to Brown to do them a favor. The stakes are high."
The Guardian reported Saturday, May 19, that Brown is expected to launch a full inquiry into the Iraq war once he takes over from Blair on June 27.
In his acceptance speech earlier this month, the prime minister in waiting admitted that mistakes were made in Iraq.
Senior figures in the US National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department told the Telegraph that cordial relations between the UK and the US will be "at an end" if Brown plays "gesture politics" over Iraq.
The number of British troops in Iraq is being cut from 7,100 at the start of the year to 5,500. There is no official timetable for full-scale withdrawal.
Different Leadership
The image of a different and adamant Brown is one that resonates across the Bush administration with no comparison at all with Blair, ridiculed by many as a a Bush poodle.
"They feel that Brown is a step into the unknown, and what they do know about him," one official told the Telegraph.
US officials say Brown apparently does not see eye to eye with Washington on a host of issues.
"They don't like Brown's obsession with soft power. He's not interested in the war on terror," one official said.
Nor is Brown seen as a reliable ally against Iran.
"If they decided to strike Iran's military facilities and Brown didn't allow the use of British bases, this is an issue that could divide the alliance," a US source with security connections told the paper.
Experts further forbade icy relationship between Brown and Bush from their first encounter last month.
A source close to Brown said the meeting was "cool" with "no Colgate moment" ÔÇö a reference to Tony Blair's first encounter with Bush in 2001, lightened by the discovery that they shared the same toothpaste.
In an interview with BBC radio Saturday, former US president Jimmy Carter was asked how he would describe Blair's attitude to Bush.
"Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," he replied.
May 21, 2007
Islam Online |
Monday, 21 May 2007
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