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LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is set to kick off a three-day tour of the United States on Wednesday, floated a raft of proposals aimed at strengthening the two countries' "special relationship".
In a comment piece published in the Wall Street Journal, Brown called for greater cooperation and exchanges between British and American universities, entrepreneurs, charities, scientific researchers and young people, as well as increased efforts to cement English as the world's most popular language.
"The special relationship should be forged not merely by formal ties between governments, but by widening and deepening understanding and contact between people," Brown wrote, according to a copy of the comment piece distributed by his Downing Street office.
The prime minister left Britain on Tuesday evening for a three-day tour of the United States, during which he will meet with US President George W. Bush, Wall Street financiers, and deliver a keynote speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
During the trip from Wednesday to Friday, Brown, noted as a keen Atlanticist who holidays in the US east coast resort of Cape Cod each year, is also due to meet White House hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, from the Democratic Party, and the Republicans' John McCain.
Noting that several British cabinet ministers attended universities in the United States, and former US president Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Brown called for "moving cooperation between our universities at a far higher level".
He said that the two countries should also "strengthen even further our cooperation in health research" and added that if scientists in Britain and America worked together, "our two countries could make a huge difference in dealing with the impact of climate change".
On promoting English, Brown wrote that he had asked the British Council, a cultural organisation partly funded by the foreign ministry, to develop, alongside American private-sector and non-governmental groups, ways in which English lessons could be offered to anyone in the world who wanted them.
Brown wrote that he was also "proposing cooperation on enterprise so that young business leaders in each country regularly conduct exchanges and learn from each other" and added that he wanted to see "British and US charities come together to discuss projects where working in common we can make a difference".
According to his comment piece, regulators in both countries would discuss how to use rules governing charitable donations to help American and British charities work together better.
Finally, he said he wanted young people on both sides of the Atlantic to meet each other more, either through cultural exchanges or through volunteer programmes.
"Each of these initiatives offers a modern means of expressing our special relationship in the 21st century – bringing people together, increasing understanding and realising the potential for the greater good when our two nations work together," he wrote.
"I believe that the future of our relationship can, if we choose, deliver far more even than it has achieved in its past. Not just for both our nations, but for the world too."
- AFP/so
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