As Blair sets departure, finance chief is in line

By Kevin Sullivan

LONDON - Gordon Brown, who is set to become prime minister of Britain on June 27, was sitting in the White House one day last month chatting with national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley when, as Brown later put it, "President Bush happened to drop in for a meeting."

Two of the world's most powerful politicians, in their first substantial conversation, chatted for 45 minutes about Iraq, Afghanistan and world trade. White House officials said the meeting was hardly happenstance but planned in advance.

The fact that the icebreaking session was held so quietly, and that the British finance minister so carefully played down his first meeting with the U.S. president, illustrates the pickle in which Brown finds himself as he prepares to take over from Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair on Thursday announced a date for his long-expected departure from office, June 27.

Brown, 56, has more knowledge and experience regarding the United States than perhaps any British leader in history, according to analysts here. He has studied U.S. politics, economics and social policy intimately. He vacations on Cape Cod and has extraordinarily close friendships in U.S. political circles.

But analysts here say the British public's toxic feelings toward Bush and the Iraq war -- and Blair's unyielding support for both -- mean that Prime Minister Brown will have to maintain a certain distance from the White House, at least until next year's presidential election.

"His personal relations with Bush will be much cooler, and deliberately so," said James Naughtie, a prominent BBC radio broadcaster who wrote a book about the relationship between Brown and Blair. "He won't stand up and take Bush on in some crude way. But I would not be at all surprised if over the next six or nine months there is some collision and headlines here say relations with Washington have cooled. Brown knows that large numbers of people in this country would say, 'At last!' "