Brown to meet Bush for talks

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to visit the US this weekend for talks with President George Bush at the presidential retreat in Camp David, the White House announced today.

"It's a pretty broad agenda," press secretary Tony Snow, accompanying Mr Bush on a trip to Philadelphia, told reporters.

Mr Brown will get the homespun treatment that Mr Bush often served up to Tony Blair and other world leaders, including Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian was a guest of Mr Bush and his father, the former President George HW Bush, at the elder Bush's Maine seaside resort home recently.

Mr Snow said Mr Brown would arrive on Sunday night and have dinner and meetings at Camp David, Maryland, on Monday, although he said he did not know if Mr Bush and Mr Brown planned a joint news conference there.

The two leaders have a "very special important relationship," Mr Snow said. He said they were expected to talk about issues of "shared interest and concern", including Iraq, Iran, Kosovo and Darfur, as well as the US push to build a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

Mr Bush and Mr Blair formed a close relationship as leaders in wartime, and Mr Blair often was criticised for that in the UK.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband stressed in a recently-published commentary that the US remained Britain's strongest ally despite the change of leadership.

"With a new Brown government, some people are looking for evidence that our alliance is breaking up," Mr Miliband wrote.

"Nothing has changed. Our strongest bilateral relationship is with the US."