Obama, U.K. PM Brown Best Friends Forever

(AP/News Team International/pool)

Both governments are going out of their way to make that point Thursday morning after the latest eruption of indignation by the British press about Mr. Obama "snubbing" the U.K. leader on their simultaneous visit to New York.

"Angry Barack Obama rebuffs Gordon Brown," reads the headline in the conservative-leaning Telegraph. "At left: Prime Minister Gordon Brown, left, greets President Obama as he arrives for the G20 summit at the ExCel center in London, April 2, 2009.According to British media, the White House rejected at least five requests for a bilateral meeting between Brown and Mr. Obama on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly. An ominous sign, the reports scare Britons into thinking, for the long-touted "special relationship" between the two allies.Both governments immediately denied the reports of rejection.In an email which hit my inbox at the ungodly hour of 3:53 a.m. Eastern, the White House scrambled to pour water on the fire, which clearly had been keeping them up."Any stories that suggest trouble in the bilateral relationship between the United States and U.K. are totally absurd," began the statement from National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer. "The U.S.-U.K. special relationship is strong and doing well. We would add that President Obama and Prime Minister Brown enjoy a terrific relationship."Brown's office also dismissed the reports of any great friction between the White House and 10 Downing Street, calling them "completely without foundations".This round of row-denial (which follows similar reports of a "snub" during PM Brown's visit to Washington, when the White House decided not to hold the customary joint Rose Garden news conference), is the result of a very ill elderly man in Libya. That man, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was recently granted release from a Scottish prison after serving decades for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He was freed on compassionate grounds based on medical assessments that said he'd soon lose his fight against cancer.Mr. Obama "expressed his disappointment" over the Scottish justice system's decision — which Mr. Brown's government vehemently denied any role in.It's possible that the Obama White House decided to give Brown the cold shoulder in New York over the decision to free al-Megrahi. I would just like to point out another possibility. Maybe Mr. Obama was just busy.The president met bilaterally on Wednesday with Chinese leader Hu Jintao, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama. He also gave his own address to the General Assembly. And, as CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk pointed out, his dizzying agenda also had him speaking to the U.N. Climate Change Summit, meeting with Sub-Saharan African leaders, becoming the first American president to chair a Security Council meeting, and holding a meeting for U.N. peacekeepers.

All that on top of trying desperately to awkward, impromptu encounters in U.N. corridors with unsavory characters like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez.

His meetings with Medvedev and Hu were absolutely critical to ongoing negotiations aimed at denuclearizing North Korea and ensuring Iran doesn't arm itself with nuclear warheads. His talks with Medvedev may actually have sealed Russia's key support for potential new sanctions against Iran.

While Great Britain is playing a role in those talks, Mr. Obama already sees eye-to-eye with Brown on the issues so a sit-down was far less important for the two leaders.

As for Hatoyama — he's only been in office for a matter of weeks, and as the new leader of a nation so deeply tied to the U.S. economy and military, their one-on-one was a commonsense courtesy call.

As his office was quick to point out, Brown did chat with Mr. Obama in a brief "walk-and-talk" in the U.N. kitchen on Wednesday, and the men were scheduled to see more of each other at events on Thursday.

So relax, Britain. We're still friends.