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Cameron's tour hardly rebalances U.S.-Britain special ties

By Jiang Guopeng: 0 Comments Print E-mail Xinhua, July 21, 2010

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British Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting Washington. His tour might help quench "the fire" triggered by the British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico, but seems less possible to rebalance its so-called special relationship with the United States.

Visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron attends a joint press conference after his meeting with U.S. President Obama (not pictured) at the East Room of the White House in Washington D.C., capital of the United States, July 20, 2010. [Zhang Jun/Xinhua]

Cameron paid his first official visit to the White House, where he met with U.S. President Barack Obama and discussed bilateral relationship and issues of common concerns, including war in Afghanistan, sanctions against Iran, and peace in the Middle East.

However, two issues related to the British Petroleum (BP) were actually topping the agenda of the Obama-Cameron meeting. The world's biggest energy company has been blamed for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and its alleged "lobbying" role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber last August.

The company certainly has been exhausted by fierce rage in the United States. That's why Cameron's tour was labeled as a "fire-extinguishing."

The prime minister's main mission this time is to appease Americans' anger at BP, not to target at developing his personal friendship with Obama, or rebalance the relationship between the two countries.

Five days ahead of Cameron's arrival in Washington, BP announced it has capped the leak after some 80 days of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon, the company might receive a "top-kill" punishment bill from Washington, as high as 40 billion U.S. dollars.

BP has also been slammed by Americans for lobbying the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, which in fact paved the way for the release of the Lockerbie bomber and for the oil giant winning contracts from the northern African country.

The Obama administration has asked the British government to review the decision to release Baset al-Megrahi, who served eight years of a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am Flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bombing left 270 people dead, most of them Americans.

Cameron said the decision on the release was "completely wrong," but refused to link BP to the case.

He also tried to convince Americans that BP is an important company to both the British and the American economies and BP should remain "stable and strong."

However, it seems that Americans are unwilling to forgive BP. The U.S. Senate is going to hold a hearing next week on BP's role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Experts here say the trans-Atlantic friction over BP would weaken the U.S.-Britain special relationship further.

The so-called special relationship, coined by former British prime minister Winston Churchill in 1946, has been used to describe the close political, cultural and historical relations between the United States and Britain. But after some 50 years, the relationship seems losing its balance.

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