US President Barack Obama reassured British Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday that his frustration over the mammoth oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not an attack on Britain, Cameron’s office said, as the two leaders tried to soothe trans-Atlantic tensions over the disaster.
Cameron’s Downing Street office said the two leaders held a “warm and constructive” telephone conversation for more than 30 minutes.
Obama has recently sharpened his criticism of BP as the company struggles to stop millions of liters of oil gushing from its ruptured deep-sea well. Cameron is under pressure to get Obama to tone down the rhetoric against a major British company, fearing it will hurt millions of Britons — as well as many Americans — who hold BP stock in investments and pension plans.
PHOTO: AFP
Cameron’s office said the prime minister “expressed his sadness at the ongoing human and environmental catastrophe,” but stressed BP’s economic importance to Britain, the US and other countries.
It said Obama recognized that BP — which he has pointedly referred to in public by its former name, British Petroleum — is a multinational company, “and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity.”
Obama said he had no interest in undermining BP’s value. The company’s stock has lost 40 percent of its value since the oil rig fire on April 20 that unleashed the US’ worst oil spill in history.
Downing Street said the two men agreed that BP should continue “to work intensively to ensure that all sensible and reasonable steps are taken as rapidly as practicable to deal with the consequences of this catastrophe.”
Obama told Cameron that the US’ frustration “has nothing to do with national identity but with ensuring that a large, wealthy company lives up to its obligations,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private call.
The official said Obama told Cameron that BP “must meet its obligations to those whose lives have been disrupted,” and that the administration “will insist everything be done to cap the well, capture the oil, and pay for the cleanup, the environmental damage done and the tens of thousands of economic claims as a result of this disaster.”
US Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson sent a letter to BP officials on Friday expressing frustration with the overall pace of the effort and ordered the company to identify ways to expedite the process in the next 48 hours.
Downing Street also said Cameron and Obama reaffirmed their belief in “the unique strength of the US-UK relationship.”
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