Brown finally gets face-to-face meeting with Obama (for 30 seconds at least)

By Tim Shipman
Updated: 02:33 EDT, 25 September 2009

Gordon Brown finally met with Barack Obama before yesterday's UN Security Council meeting in New York.

The pair shook hands as Mr Obama moved through the crowd greeting other leaders before chairing the meeting on nuclear proliferation.

It is the first time the pair have been pictured together at the summit and is unlikely to diffuse the row over claims Mr Brown had been snubbed five times at the UN by Mr Obama.

Downing Street today insisted he and the U.S. president have the 'strongest friendship'.

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Strongest friendship: Gordon Brown greets Barack Obama as the U.S. president arrives to chair a session of the UN Security Council in New York today

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The pair looked friendly before Mr Obama moved off to greet other leaders at the Security Council meeting today

But tonight former foreign minister Lord Malloch-Brown said British officials had been over-anxious in their efforts to arrange a meeting with Mr Obama.

'I don't know whether they were frantic or not, they should not have been frankly so desperate,' he told BBC Radio 4's World At One.

'(Mr Obama) has had lots of contact with Gordon Brown. I think, very sensibly, his people had other priorities of leaders that he had not seen as much of, and who are equally as important.'

Lord Malloch-Brown acknowledged, however, that the release of the Lockerbie bomber had had an impact in the US.

'Obviously the whole Lockerbie thing went down like a very cold shower in the US, there is no getting around it. But I do not think it diminishes any of the vital long-term interests that bind the two countries together,' he said.

See I'm not going blind... Brown looks over his hastily-rewritten notes before speaking as Barack Obama today

Mr Obama had refused five separate requests from the Prime Minister for a private meeting during his U.S. trip for the UN summit in New York this week.

Instead, the Prime Minister was reduced to meeting the President in a bizarre 'kitchen summit' at the UN building after Mr Obama turned down British plans for a series of joint announcements between the two leaders.

Mr Brown said: 'President Obama and I have the strongest working relationship and the strongest friendship.

'I am not only very confident about the strength of the relationship between our countries and I am very confident about the relationship between the two of us.'

He added: 'I talked to President Obama. I talked to him before I came to the meetings here, I talked to him at the meetings.

'I had a long talk with him after Monday's meeting. We are meeting today, we are chairing two meetings.

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Face time: Barack Obama concludes a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in New York yesterday

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Denied: Gordon Brown speaks to the UN General Assembly in New York yesterday

'The special relationship is strong and strengthening. And it's strengthening because there is a common purpose.'

He went on: 'We are dealing with exactly the same challenges, and we see things in very similar ways.

'We are about to make quite big changes to the way the international community operates to deal with these problems, and that is America and Britain working more closely together than ever.'

Washington's snubs are in stark contrast to planned one-on-one meetings with the leaders of China, Russia and Japan.

Diplomats revealed that Downing Street had to 'beg' for a meeting with Mr Obama to secure high profile backing for his economic and climate change plans.

But one official revealed that the White House had rebuffed the requests for joint appearances five times over the last couple of weeks. 

Number 10 today insisted  that the claims that requests for one-to-one talks had been rebuffed were 'completely without foundations'.

A Downing Street source insisted last night: 'The PM and President Obama are having a number of meetings this week. This included a wide-ranging discussion following last night's climate change dinner.

'They will also be co-chairing an important meeting on Thursday on Pakistan and the fight against terrorism.'

The snubs come after President Obama expressed his 'disappointment' at the release of the Lockerbie bomber in a tense phone call with Mr Brown earlier this month.

Earlier, the Prime Minister defended the Government's actions on U.S. television, insisting Megrahi's release had been a matter for the Scottish authorities and that there had been no deal involving Libya's vast oil reserves.

The families of the American victims, however, remain deeply angry at the way Megrahi has been allowed to return home to die and the decision has been strongly condemned by the administration.

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Audience: Mr Obama addresses the UN's General Assembly in New York yesterday

Officials also revealed that the Prime Minister had to fight before he got a prime time speaking slot at the UN general assembly after originally being shunted into one long after the main news bulletins in Britain. 

But in the end Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi's 96-minute rant, in which he blamed the West for starting 65 wars since 1945, significantly delayed Mr Brown's 15-minute speech.

The Prime Minister later re-wrote part of his speech to issue a ringing defence of the UN's principles in the face of the Colonel's outspoken attack.

One diplomat said: 'Downing Street were begging for some time with Obama and they got five knockbacks.

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'They tried to use the swine flu announcement to get alongside him but the White House were not having any of it. He even got punted into a lousy speaking spot.'

Mr Brown did manage to have a 15-minute conversation with Mr Obama following a reception on Tuesday evening, when they talked about Afghanistan and their plans for the global economy, which will be thrashed out later in the week at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Mr Obama's senior aides told a recent campaign biographer that they found meeting Mr Brown a 'depressing experience' and said there was an 'end of regime feel' to his Government.

A diplomat in New York said Mr Brown's decision to send 10 per cent of Britain's stock of swine flu vaccine to the Third World last week, matching a similar pledge by Mr Obama, was a last ditch attempt to persuade the President to agree to a face-to-face meeting.

But the Prime Minister was the victim of a second protocol problem when he was honoured as the 'World Statesman of the Year' at a star-studded reception.

The award, given by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, was handed to Mr Brown by former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger in the presence of rock star Bono and Queen Rania of Jordan.

But the Prime Minister was only there for 15 minutes, leaving guests who had paid $1,000 a head for dinner afterwards dumbfounded.

A No 10 spokesman said he had never been due to attend the dinner.

But one guest said: 'Gordon Brown turned up for a black tie dinner in a lounge suit and disappeared after a quarter of an hour.

He and Sarah were listed as guests on the tickets and the posters and everyone expected them to stay.'

Mr Brown's problems threatened to overshadow his calls for greater international cooperation on the economy and climate change.

Mr Obama announced in his speech that the U.S. intends to break the link with the Bush era and offer a 'new era of engagement' with the world.

He said that in exchange other countries would have to do more to help the U.S. deal with the war in Afghanistan and the threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons.