June 27, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 11, 1428

LONDON: Gordon Brown will pursue Tony Blair’s broadly pro-US stance once he moves into 10 Downing Street this week, but with likely cooler relations with President George W. Bush, analysts say.

At the same time Brown’s ties with Europe could be more cautious than Blair’s, and potentially more abrasive, judging by his past dealings with his EU colleagues while finance minister over the last decade.

Above all, different style and a shift in emphasis can be expected after the media-friendly Blair years.

“Just in terms of the language that Brown uses, we’ll hear a lot about multilateralism,” said David Mepham of the Institute for Public Policy Research and former foreign policy adviser for the governing Labour Party.

“He’s kind of interested in how international systems work, how to make global institutions function,” Mepham told the news agency, adding he may seek to do more to engage China, India and Brazil.

On Africa, Brown will follow through on Blair’s campaign to alleviate poverty, while global warming is also a topic close to his heart.

But expect differences on perhaps the defining theme of Blair’s foreign policy: his belief in foreign interventionism, as seen in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and more controversially in support of Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I think he will be more reluctant to engage in the sort of intervention that we have seen Blair undertake,” said Paul Williams, a visiting professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

“He (Brown) is just going to be cautious. So for example in Darfur at the moment, there is no great cause for military intervention there,” Williams told the news group.

Brown has already tried to put some distance between him and Blair on Iraq, by saying serious mistakes were made there and Britain needed to learn from them, Mepham noted.

In the event that Bush launches military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, Mepham said, Brown “wouldn’t send troops but wouldn’t criticise either.”

Brown is “instinctively a very pro-American politician” who spends holidays in the United States, reads American history, and maintains close ties with US politicians, though more so among Democrats than Bush’s Republicans.

But he doubted Brown would enjoy the same close personal relationship with Bush that Blair has had. “I don’t think the personalities of Brown and Bush would lead to that kind of closeness of relationships,” he said.

The Economist magazine added that the finance minister may put greater stress than Blair on resolving economic problems as part of efforts to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.

Closer to home, Brown will likely come under pressure almost immediately over Europe, after last week’s European Union summit at which Blair agreed a new EU treaty to replace the bloc’s doomed constitution.

Specifically opposition Tories — hoping to beat Brown at an early general election — are demanding that Brown call a referendum on the treaty.

He will likely resist such demands, but his cooler stance on Europe is well known — as finance minister he was notorious for lecturing his EU colleagues on the need for reforms when he attended Brussels meetings with them.

Perhaps sensing this, new French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month urged Brown to recognise that Europe is not “outmoded” when he takes over from Blair.

But overall some analysts admit that forecasting what Brown will be like is tough, since Brown has remained relatively silent on his foreign policy plans.

“From now on, enigmatic distance from key foreign policy issues will not be an option,” Jonathan Freedland wrote in the New Statesman.

“Brown will have to lead and decide.” “Foreign policy is close to the essence of the prime minister’s role. And, as predecessors from Churchill through Eden to Thatcher would surely testify, it’s what can make or break you,” Freedland said.

Brown’s detractors worry that Brown’s powerful intellect and deliberative approach serve him poorly as prime minister, a job that requires quick thinking and response.

“One uber-Blairite warns that, when the first international crisis strikes, Brown is not going to know what has hit him,” Freedland wrote.—AFP