http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6924680.stm
For those who wanted Gordon Brown to make a clean break from the Tony Blair years, the new British prime minister's first meeting with President Bush might have been a disappointment.
He did not make such a break. He did not want to. However, there were subtle signs to differentiate this relationship from the intensity of the Bush-Blair years.
And Mr Brown tried to round out his firm re-commitment to Mr Bush in the fight against al-Qaeda with a stress on softer policies in a speech at the UN - calling for goals to reduce world poverty to be met by a global "coalition for justice".
His visit to the UN coincided with a welcome development over Darfur in the form of a pending Security Council resolution approving the despatch of a UN-led peacekeeping force - at long last.
Subtle differences
At Camp David, for a start, there was the style.
Whereas George and Tony appeared at their first Camp David news conference in casual outfits (Blair was wearing what the then British ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer noted were somewhat tight jeans), for Mr Bush and Mr Brown it was suits and ties. It's all going to be a little bit more formal.
Then there were the words. Gordon Brown called the talks "full and frank", usually a phrase reserved for rather tense exchanges.
Perhaps he did not mean that, but he omitted the personal comments attempted by Mr Bush, who tried to joke about Gordon Brown not being the "dour or awkward" Scotsman he had expected.
And the words subtly illustrated, not policy differences, but their own policy priorities and approaches.
President Bush's language was, as always, full of phrases like "the war against extremists and radicals" in Iraq and around the world
Prime Minister Brown deliberately described terrorism as a "crime", in an effort perhaps to demystify it and make it easier for everyone around the world, Muslims included, to oppose it.
And he tried to paint a more complex picture of Iraq by differentiating the factions - the Sunni/Shia split, the "involvement of Iran", the "large number of al-Qaeda terrorists".
However, as Mr Bush said, both agreed that this was "akin to the Cold War".
Gordon Brown also, perhaps pointedly, remarked that a further British pullback in Iraq to what is called a "overwatch" role "will be made on the military advice of our commanders on the ground".
He did not make clear whether those commanders would be British only.
He called Afghanistan the "front line against terrorism," an honour normally assigned by Mr Bush to Iraq.
The British prime minister also referred a couple of times to the issue of "climate change". Mr Bush did not.
Pressure on Iran
The point about Iraq and Afghanistan is that these are policies that Mr Brown inherited. This relationship has not yet been tested in the development of new ones.
The most difficult one could be Iran. Further sanctions are expected to be discussed at the UN in September but if there is no progress in getting Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, there could be pressure within the Bush administration for military action to be taken before the president leaves office in January 2009.
That would indeed be a test to see if the US and UK stayed together.
Nuclear connection
One must never forget in the British-American relationship the importance of nuclear weapons. Mr Brown supported the recent decision by the British government to replace its Trident nuclear weapons system with new US missiles.
The significance of these ties cannot be over-estimated and they partly explain why it is seen as essential for British prime ministers to keep more or less in step with an American president.
Even the Labour prime minister during the height of the Vietnam War, Harold Wilson, refused to criticise US policy, though he also refused to send troops.
The Harold Wilson comparison maybe a little belated though since British troops went to Iraq a long time ago. Still, if you purely went by the noises that BBC news reporters seem to making over all this, Brown's greater comfort with the UN than with Bush, the slight readjustment of perspective on Terror and, finally, some sort of action on Darfur, then I would say, good. Whether it will really amount to anything particularly concrete methinks might be another matter. Still, maybe after eighteen months, with a Democrat in the White House (*hopes*) things might alter a little more. Though by how much still is something to be seen, and eighteen months is still a very long time.
