LONDON, Oct 3 (KUNA) — The White House no longer views Britain as its most loyal ally in Europe since British Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office and is instead increasingly turning towards France and Germany, according to Bush administration sources.
“Theres concern about Brown,” a senior White House foreign policy official told The Daily Telegraph newspaper here Wednesday.
“But this is compensated by the fact that Paris and Berlin are much less of a headache. The need to hinge everything on London as the guarantor of European security has gone,” he said.
With former British Prime Minister Tony Blair departed, Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president, is seen by many as the man
US President George W Bush can best do business with in Europe.
Although the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not lived up to initial expectations in Washington, she is still seen as far preferable to her predecessor Gerhard Schroder.
The White House official added that Britain would always be “the cornerstone” of US policy towards Europe but there was “a lot of unhappiness” about how British forces had performed in Basra and an acceptance that Brown would pull the remaining 4,500 troops out of Iraq next year.
“Operationally, British forces have performed poorly in Basra,” said the official.
“Maybe it’s best that they leave. Now we will have a clear field in southern Iraq,” he added.
Another White House official described Brown as “challenging” and far less close to the US than Tony Blair.
There has been a notable reduction in contact between Downing Street and the White House since Blair left and US officials have remarked on how few British ministers have visited Washington in recent months.
Brown and Bush are understood to have spoken twice by telephone in three months since they met at Camp David last June, whereas Blair and Bush held video-link conferences, often weekly.
Kurt Volker, a senior US State Department official with responsibility for Europe, disagreed with the White House official’s view, arguing that the British withdrawal to the airport in Basra was a “tactical” decision and that the predicted chaos “hasn’t happened.” He told The Daily Telegraph that Brown had shown “a lot more steadiness than maybe people expected” and while his style had been very different from that of Tony Blair there had been “a lot of consistency” over policy.
But Volker emphasized that “things are changing in Europe” and paid tribute to Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, both for visiting Iraq and for warning over Iran that the world had to “prepare for the worst and the worst is war.” “Kouchner’s comments were very helpful because what he is indicating is that this is serious. It’s not just a matter of playing out diplomacy forever with no result. It’s got to provide a result,” he said.
Privately, White House aides accept that Brown would not support military action against Iran.