Brown insists that US is Britain's strongest ally
I sometimes wonder if Brown is being very clever or very stupid...
He has surely realised that the present US administration have very little interest in the United Nations, which Bush regards as an organisation that seeks to limit his presidential power by forcing him to ask for a "permission slip" before he can invade other nations?Gordon Brown will today insist that America remains Britain's most important ally as he attempts to draw Europe and the United States into a new drive to make the United Nations "fit for purpose" in the 21st century.
He will welcome closer links between the White House and France and Germany, and press for redoubled efforts to reform the UN to allow it to tackle problems of climate change and global terrorism.
Maybe Gordon is being clever by stating our closeness to the US whilst making that closeness dependent on an organisation that the Bush regime despises:
So, Brown is stressing our closeness whilst emphasising the need for us to reform the UN and tackle global warming.Mr Brown told Sky News: "It's important to recognise that over the next few years as European countries like France and Germany move closer to America, there's a great opportunity for all of us to work together to reshape the international institutions, to make them fit-for-purpose for the decade that we are in, rather than the decade in which the international institutions were created in the 1940s."
He added the EU and US could "achieve a great deal" by working more closely together to face up to the challenges of global warming, failed states, security and global pandemics.
The Bush administration have never shown any particular interest in either of those two subjects which is why I wonder what Brown is actually up to. Is he sending a signal to the left that he understands our concerns whilst sugar coating what he is saying for an American audience? I am genuinely baffled.
I understand that all British Prime Ministers have to align themselves closely to the US, but to speak of "shared values" at a time when the US are debating whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture, makes many of us on the left wonder what "values" we actually share with the current incumbent of the White House.Britain has already made clear that it favours expansion of the permanent membership of UN Security Council from the current five nations – the US, Russia, China, the UK, and France – to 10 nations by including the so-called G4 nations – Japan, Germany, Brazil and India – as well as a representative from the African continent.
The Government has also backed organisational reforms of the New York- based body to make it more responsive to humanitarian and political crises.
The talk of reform comes after Mr Brown has moved to distance himself from Mr Blair's foreign policy since he took over as Prime Minister in June.
In September, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, acknowledged that mistakes were made over Iraq and promised to learn lessons from the "scars" of the war.
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