Economic crisis on agenda as Brown meets with Obama

Mar 3, 2009, 16:24 GMT

Washington - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived at the White House Tuesday for talks with US President Barack Obama expected to focus largely on the global economic crisis.

The two leaders were to explore ways to boost the global economy as Obama weighs whether to ask Congress for billions of more dollars in funding to bail-out the finance sector. The meeting comes about one month ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London.

Brown becomes the first European leader to visit the White House since Obama took office January 20 in a continuing sign of the special relationship between the two countries. The two leaders are also expected to discuss the conflict in Afghanistan during their meeting and lunch.

Brown has pushed for broad reforms of the international finance system to more tightly regulate markets. High risk lending and loan defaults in the United States have been the focus of blame for the credit freeze that has brought on the world's economic downturn.

'If you've got a global financial system, as we have now, and banks are entangled or interlinked with banks in all parts of the world, then you need to think about how you can assure people that the savings are going to be safe, that the banks are going to do the job that people expect,' Brown told National Public Radio before the meeting.

Prior to his arrival, officials in London said Brown would deliver a 'clear message' for urgent worldwide action to stave off further economic fallout. Playing on former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's economic programme during the Great Depression of the 1930, Brown has advocated a 'global new deal.'

Brown is due to address Congress on Wednesday, becoming the fifth British prime minister granted the honour. Brown's trip comes as his Labour Party is trailing the opposition Conservatives by more than 10 percentage points in polls.

The fight with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan has risen to the top of Obama's foreign agenda, and he is expected to ask Europe for more help. Britain already has more than 8,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and the two leaders have sought greater contributions from other NATO allies.

'We're dealing with a new tactic on the part of the Taliban. It's essentially guerrilla warfare that they're practicing,' Brown said on NPR.

Obama has already announced that 17,000 more US soldiers will arrive in Afghanistan later this year, and more could be on the way. The new deployment will bring the US presence to more than 50,000.