Lockerbie – a tale of two briefings

A White House “readout” of the phone call between President Obama and the Prime Minister reveals something that seems to have slipped off the No. 10 version of events.

It says: “The President expressed his disappointment over the Scottish Executive’s decision to release convicted Pan Am 103 Bomber al-Megrahi back to Libya.”

Asked why it wasn’t on the UK “readout” a no. 10 spokesman said “because it wasn’t a substantive part of the conversation” and it wasn’t for them to brief on what the President says.

I hear the Prime Minister told the President that it was a matter for the Scottish Executive.

But the President and his briefers will have been sufficiently across this story to have noticed that – so why did they bring it up? Gordon Brown’s believes the President had to play to a domestic audience and wouldn’t condescend to ring the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

But is it that they think the British government, which has now admitted that it didn’t want al-Megrahi to die in jail, was in the wrong place on this issue and maybe even complicit in the release?

For the record the US briefing describes the conversation as “productive,” Downing Street describes it as “warm and substantial” – a kind of reversal of that first Brown/Bush summit in Camp David when the then President all but said it was a love-in but Gordon Brown, mindful that he wanted to sound different from Tony Blair, said the discussions were “full and frank,” diplo-speak for a shouting match.

Today’s tale of two briefings doesn’t qualify as a diplomatic incident but both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have for months been plucking daisy petals wondering if President Obama “loves them, loves them not” … but Mr Brown won’t be discouraged and his wooing of President Obama is about to go into overdrive again at the G20 in Pittsburgh, where he hopes political romance will blossom for all the world to see.