Wikileaks Cables: Conservatives Promised To Run 'Pro-American Regime'

[LaoPo]

WikiLeaks cables: Conservatives promised to run 'pro-American regime'

Leaked dispatch reveals how US diplomats are amused by Britain's 'paranoid' fears about so-called special relationship

David Leigh - Friday 3 December 2010 23.00 GMT

David Cameron with Barack Obama at a press conference at the White House earlier this year. The incoming Conservatives appear to have made some wide-ranging offers of political co-operation with the US. Photograph: Rod Lamkey Jr/AFP/Getty Images

Conservative party politicians lined up before the general election to promise that they would run a "pro-American regime" and buy more arms from the US if they came to power this year, the leaked American embassy cables show.

Despite British leaders' supportive stance, the dispatches also reveal – in what some will see as humiliating detail – how US diplomats in London are amused by what they call Britain's "paranoid" fears about the so-called special relationship.

One said the anxious British attitude "would often be humorous if it were not so corrosive" and that it was tempting to take advantage of this neurosis to "make London more willing to respond favourably when pressed for assistance". The UK was said to offer "unparalleled" help in promoting America's aims.

The incoming Conservatives appear to have made some wide-ranging offers of political co-operation with the US. The cables detail a series of private meetings with Tory frontbenchers, many of whom are now in the cabinet.

Liam Fox, now the defence secretary, promised to buy American military equipment, while the current foreign secretary, William Hague, offered the ambassador a "pro-American" government. Hague also said the entire Conservative leadership were, like him, "staunchly Atlanticist" and "children of Thatcher".

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http://www.guardian....ship?CMP=twt_gu

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