United States:British prime minister Gordon Brown flew into Washington last night for his first meeting as prime minister with President Bush, determined to shift the focus away from Iraq towards less divisive issues such as trade and Darfur.
Mr Brown, who is scheduled to hold formal talks today with Mr Bush and his team at Camp David, lavished praise on Mr Bush, particularly his efforts towards achieving a world trade deal and stopping the genocide in Sudan.
In a statement to journalists travelling with him on the plane, Mr Brown said the US-British relationship was founded on common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual. "And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in the years ahead," he said.
He is intent on sustaining a juggling act in which he maintains the alliance with the US while showing it is not as tight as under Tony Blair. He stressed that he regarded the alliance "as the single most important bilateral relationship that Britain enjoyed".
He was due in Camp David in Maryland for a one-to-one dinner with Mr Bush last night. Today, after the formal talks end, he is to visit Congress, where he will meet Democratic leaders as well as Republicans.
On the plane, Mr Brown's spokesman insisted the UK policy on Iraq remained unchanged and that there would be no precipitous withdrawal of British forces. But the US administration views a recent visit by Mr Brown's chief foreign affairs spokesman, Simon McDonald, as preparation for a speedier pull-out.
While senior Bush administration officials say publicly that they have seen no significant policy changes by Mr Brown that would affect the alliance, in private they have expressed unhappiness with the prime minister's rebuttal of Mr Bush's repeated phrase "war on terror" and on his appointment of a Bush critic, Lord Malloch Brown, to the UK foreign office.
Also on the agenda for the Camp David meeting are Iran and European missile defence. Britain's strained relationship with Russia is not on the agenda.
The US regards the tension over the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko as a bilateral issue and has its own differences with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Tomorrow Mr Brown will travel to the UN, where he is to meet the new UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
- (Guardian service)