Brown Downplays US Fissure

Britain's new Prime Minister is set to meet with President Bush at Camp David next week amid rumors that relations between the two nations have cooled since Tony Blair's departure. Brown is walking a tightrope between rebuffing this speculation and being seen as "America's poodle," an epithet Blair earned for his close collaboration with Bush.

"Brown has no 'poodle' baggage, no one's ever thought of him as a poodle," said an American scholar. Nor will he and Bush be "joined together at the hip," one of his appointees says. The talks will cover an array of issues from climate change to Iraq, a contentious subject that analysts say helped sink Brown's predecessor.