By Michael Abramowitz and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 29, 2007

Gordon Brown faces a quandary as he arrives at Camp David tonight for his first sit-down with President Bush as Britain's prime minister: How does he distance himself from a U.S. president who helped sink the popularity of Brown's predecessor but preserve a political relationship that is essential to Britain's future?

The expectation on both sides of the Atlantic is that Brown will try to carve out an independent line on at least one of the big issues facing the two nations, whether Iraq, Iran, global warming or terrorism.

Brown needs to "show he is his own man, that he is not the president's poodle," said Peter Kellner, a British political analyst. "George Bush is not popular in Britain."

The "poodle" epithet long followed Tony Blair, whom Brown succeeded a month ago. "The overwhelming reason Blair was unpopular at the end of his term was because he was considered too close to the United States, and he paid a big domestic price for that," said Philip H. Gordon, a former White House expert on Europe. "It would be unimaginable if his successor did not take some steps to turn the page."

Both the White House and Downing Street are stressing that little has been disturbed in the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain -- which has long magnified British global influence -- since the elevation of Brown, who as chancellor of the exchequer for the past decade focused on the economy while Blair managed foreign affairs.

Although friction may lie ahead on such issues as Iran's nuclear program or the environment, U.S. officials appear confident that there will be no sudden departures from Brown on the key issues -- especially on keeping Britain's remaining 5,500 troops in Iraq.

The prime minister has moved to tamp down speculation that he is ready to break with Bush. That was fueled by some of his early appointments, including that of Mark Malloch Brown, a former top U.N. official who has been critical of U.S. neoconservatives and recently remarked that Washington and London would no longer "be joined at the hip." Brown also held meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, reviving talk that his foreign policy will tilt more to Europe than the United States.

But Brown has followed up with comments emphasizing that he will work very closely with the U.S. administration. "We will not allow people to separate us from the United States of America in dealing with the common challenges that we face around the world," the prime minister recently told BBC Radio.

Officials in both governments said that this week's summit meeting will focus on building a rapport between the two leaders, aided by the bucolic setting of the mountaintop retreat where Bush entertains his closest foreign allies. The two leaders will dine without staff members this evening, to be followed tomorrow by breakfast, lunch, meetings and a news conference. There's no word on whether Bush will mention Brown's toothpaste preference, as he famously did at the "Colgate Summit" at Camp David when the U.S. president first sat down with Blair in 2001.

"This will mainly be a reassurance thing," said British author and political analyst Peter Riddell. "They want to knock down any suggestion that there is distance between them. Yes, they are different people, but they are fundamentally on the same wavelength."

This is not to say that there could not be disagreements -- for instance, on Afghanistan, where the two sides have differed in recent months on the proper approach for cracking down on narcotics production, a big obstacle to stabilizing that country.

The two leaders will also share their thinking on Iraq. After contributing about 40,000 soldiers for the 2003 invasion, the British have reduced their presence to about 5,500 troops in the vicinity of Basra, in the south. The light British touch in Basra was originally seen as something of a success, but security has dramatically deteriorated in recent months, with increased fighting among Shiite militias, according to military analysts.

"The assessments that I have been seeing say they have essentially been defeated, have withdrawn from the streets and are pretty much isolated in a garrison near the airport," said Stephen D. Biddle, a military analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations who recently traveled to Iraq. "The British are not providing much in terms of population security in Basra."

But even if a British pullout would not be significant militarily, it would pack a symbolic punch. Many analysts and U.S. officials anticipate that Brown will hold off on any decision until Bush announces what the U.S. strategy will be after a September report from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

John O'Sullivan, a British political commentator at the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute, said he believes the British public is mostly angry about Blair and past mistakes on Iraq, and will cut the new prime minister some slack on the British presence there. "The argument over the war tends to focus around the past and not around current policy. I don't think this will be a major issue," he said.

And John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, said it is too early to tell whether Brown will move Britain closer to continental Europe.

"Blair and [President Bill] Clinton had an outstanding personal relationship, and many people said Bush and Blair would not get along the same way, and yet they did," Bolton said. "I don't read a lot into remarks being made and confusion in Brown's new government. . . . What it really boils down to is actions, and that remains to be seen."

Jordan reported from London.