Obama and Cameron `close partners`, White House insists

BBC Online :The White House says David Cameron has been “as close a partner” as Barack Obama has had, after the president appeared to criticise the PM.Mr Cameron had become “distracted” after the 2011 intervention in Libya, Mr Obama told the Atlantic magazine. He also described Libya as “a mess”.But in an email to the BBC, a White House spokesman said the US “deeply” valued the UK’s contributions.Downing Street said Britain was still “working hard” in Libya.The article, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, is billed as the US president talking through “his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world”.In it, Mr Obama reflects on “what went wrong” after the overthrowing of the Gaddafi regime, led by the UK and France.”There’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” he said.Mr Obama said the UK prime minister soon became “distracted by a range of other things”.The US president said of the North African country: “We averted large-scale civilian casualties, we prevented what almost surely would have been a prolonged and bloody civil conflict. And despite all that, Libya is a mess.”He also spoke of “free riders”, saying European and Gulf countries were calling for action against Gaddafi – but, he said, the “habit” for several decades had been “people pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game”.Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy came in for criticism, with Mr Obama saying he “wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the fact that we had wiped out all the air defences and essentially set up the entire infrastructure” for the intervention.The White House said: “Prime Minister Cameron has been as close a partner as the president has had, and we deeply value the UK’s contributions on our shared national security and foreign policy objectives which reflect our special and essential relationship.”On Libya, it said the president had always said “all of us… could have done more”.It also said the UK had “stepped up on a range of issues”, including a pledge to spend 2% of national income on defence.According to the article, this pledge came after Mr Obama told Mr Cameron that Britain must pay its “fair share” if it wanted to continue to claim a “special relationship” with the US.BBC North America editor Jon Sopel said the unsolicited White House statement suggested Downing Street had reacted angrily.”It’s like we’ve seen a curtain drawn back on the unspun thoughts of President Obama and… the White House trying to close the curtain as quickly as it can.”A Downing Street statement highlighted the White House’s positive comments about the relationship between Mr Cameron and Mr Obama.It added there were “many difficult challenges” in Libya and defended the UK’s intervention, saying it “was the right thing to do”.It said the UK was still “working hard to support the UN-led process to establish a stable and inclusive government”.The “special relationship”- always more special to the UK and the US – has survived bigger strains: Suez, Vietnam; the Falkands; and the US invasion of Grenada, to name but a few.So some disparaging remarks about a British prime minister from an American president doesn’t really rate as earth-shattering.Nonetheless, there is little doubt that No 10 were irritated.At a press briefing yesterday his spokeswoman said the prime minister couldn’t really let a leader – Colonel Gaddafi – torture and terrorise his own people.The problem is that the president is now looking back on his two terms in the White House, while the PM is fighting for his future in an EU referendum.So the US moved swiftly to patch up the rocky relationship, sending around the equivalent of flowers after a lovers’ tiff in the form of fulsome praise for David Cameron.But that came too late to avoid the collateral damage delivered to his reputation from the president’s candid comments.Former Conservative foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind said criticism for the UK was “pretty rich” because the Americans “did far less” than France or the UK in the aftermath of the intervention.Alec Ross, a former senior adviser to to the State Department, said Mr Obama’s disappointment “probably stems from the fact the United States itself was spread so thin – that we hoped somebody would help fill the breach”.The 2011 armed rebellion assisted by Western military intervention led to the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year dictatorship. But it left a power vacuum and instability, with no authority in full control.Despite efforts to support Libya’s National Transitional Council, and the first elections in the country for decades, it rapidly descended into violence, with two rival militia-backed parliaments.A recent UN report said there were hundreds of armed groups and the chaos has allowed so-called Islamic State to gain a foothold.