Pittsburgh, September 26: US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown met on the sidelines of Friday’s Group of 20 summit, both sides said, scotching talk of a snub for the British leader.
British newspapers reported this week that Downing Street requests for bilateral talks between the two men at the United Nations and the G20 summit of developed and developing nations in Pittsburgh had been rebuffed.
The reports came amid anger in the US at last month’s release from a Scottish jail of Libya’s Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, the majority of them Americans.
A joint statement from the White House and Downing Street said Brown and Obama discussed Iran’s nuclear activities plus Afghanistan as well as the global economy as they met on the fringes of the summit of 20 world leaders.
Brown earlier told reporters he had talked to Obama informally several times this week, which has also seen politicians gather in New York for the UN General Assembly.
“I think you guys should start to understand how international meetings work,” he said, dismissing reports of a snub.
The White House had also dismissed the media reports as “totally absurd”.
–Agencies