BP oil spill concerns to cloud Obama, Cameron talks
US president Barack Obama and British prime minister David Cameron will hold talks on Tuesday overshadowed by controversy over BP that could test the vaunted “special relationship” between their countries.
They are expected to discuss BP’s role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and whether the British energy giant had influence in the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison last year — issues that have complicated transatlantic ties.
Cameron’s first visit to Washington as British prime minister comes amid a US backlash against BP. With an eye to British pensioners and other investors at home, he has pledged to stand up for the embattled company.
Aides to both leaders insist the talks aim to build on a personal rapport they struck up at last month’s Group of 20 summit in Canada and that the agenda will focus more on the war in Afghanistan, the global economy and the Middle East.
But BP and its role in the worst oil spill in US history loom large. Differences over BP’s treatment and over approaches to economic recovery raise fresh questions about a historic Anglo-American alliance already past its heyday.
Under heavy criticism over the Gulf disaster, BP faces demands from US lawmakers for an official inquiry into whether it had a hand in the release of the Libyan convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. BP has confirmed it lobbied the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer deal because it was concerned a slow resolution would hurt an offshore drilling deal with Libya. But the company said it was not involved in talks on the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, sentenced to life for the deaths of 270 people, including 189 Americans.
Cameron has made clear he will defend BP, saying it must remain “strong and stable” to make good on its promise to compensate oil spill victims and for the sake of employees and people with pension funds invested in the company in both countries.
Obama, whose approval ratings have been undercut by public anger over the disaster, has taken a hard line with BP, although his rhetoric has softened recently amid criticism his administration had gone too in bashing the company. Obama and Cameron will meet amid hopes a capping test on the blown-out well, which has largely choked off the undersea flow of oil, will pave the way for a permanent fix.
And BP said it had spent US $3.95 billion so far on efforts to tackle its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and that it aims to permanently kill the well in the first half of August.
Agencies
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