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Full Interview: British PM Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is the leader of one of America's most important allies, and Katie Couric talked with him exclusively about troops in Iraq and the struggling economy. He shared his opinions about the presidential candidates and what's on his iPod.



KATIE COURIC: Mr. Prime Minister, let me start asking you about your upcoming trip to the U.S. You're travelling to the United States this week, reportedly part of your message will be urging the U.S. to reengage in the world. How so?

GORDON BROWN: I think the United States is more engaged than it was two or three years ago. If you look at Iran and what we're trying to do together on that, if you look at President Bush's intervention at the NATO summit, wanting more European countries to join, if you look at what the different candidates for the presidency are saying about the environmental debate for the future. What I'm staying is if we're going to build a world that meets the needs of America, Britain and other countries, we have to find the shared values we hold in common and then build new institutions for the future to meet the climate change challenge, deal with early warnings of the financial crisis like the last few months, deal with conflict and reconstruction and stability. In 1945, great American visionaries built the institutions we know together, like the United Nations, the IMF. We need to build a new message in 2008, 2009, 2010. There is a chance now with good European leadership, American leadership and then other countries like China and India being brought into this, there's a chance with new global rules and institutions in building a better world.

COURIC: Do you think the U.S. will be receptive to your message?

BROWN: I'm absolutely sure that when people look at, for example, Rwanda and what happened there, which was a terrible tragedy in Africa a few years ago and what should have been done and could be done now, if there's a conflict and a need for reconstruction, the world should work together. European leadership did not support President Bush in Iraq other than Britain and one or two other countries, but we want a better relationship with America and I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future. That will be to the advantage of all of us, to deal with economic problems, climate change and help make for a more peaceful world in the future. I see huge opportunities in the next few years for Europe and America to work more closely together.

COURIC: You talk about it Rwanda, but what about Darfur?

BROWN: It's one of the great tragedies of our time. There are hundreds of thousands of people displaced and hundreds of thousands of refugees and many people have died.

COURIC: Why does the world community seem so helpless?

BROWN: What we have got to do is to get the people who are the rebels and the government to the negotiating table to talk. I helped persuade the United Nations to bring in a better force, an African Union/United Nations force. I am in favor of far tougher sanctions on Darfur and we've been pressing for that, but at the end of the day we have to get people to the negotiating table. One of the great ironies was when we persuaded the government to the negotiating table, two of the rebel groups didn't turn up. I have offered to hold talks here in London if people wish, but they have to come together. We can play our part in threats like sanctions and I'm grateful for the rest of the international community including America being part of that. Yes, it's very difficult, for example, to have a no-fly zone in Darfur, which would have been one of the options, but if we don't get the groups to the table, we won't get a settlement.

COURIC: Are you concerned that trust in the United States and the United States' reputation worldwide has been so damaged and trust has been eroded that some countries won't want to reengage?

BROWN: No, because what unites us is shared values. The belief in liberty and freedom, the sense we can together work for justice is common to the people of the United States of America and the peoples of Europe and many other parts of the world. I think even if you have disagreements on individual issues, as Germany and France would not support America on Iraq, although we have and rightly so, even if there are disagreements, if you go back to fundamentally what can bind you together, make you work together in the future, there is so much common to the values we believe are crucial to building a better world for the future. America believes in liberty and opportunity, a belief in justice, and these are the values that underpin what all countries would like to see as the basis of a new world order.

COURIC: Is anti-American sentiment still so strong and pervasive throughout the world?

BROWN: I think when you look at the values that unites the American people with the rest of the world there, may be disagreements, there have been disagreements, we can't ignore that, principally on Iraq. If you take Afghanistan, I have been in meetings where 40 countries are supporting Afghanistan, so there's not the disagreement on Afghanistan, but when you look at the values that are going to influence the development of our institutions in the future, Americans believe in liberty and justice, these will be the important values. There is far more in common between what we hold important than what divides us.

COURIC: Do you believe more engagement with the United States on a variety of issues will help dissipate some of the anti-American sentiment that still exists?

BROWN: I think at a number of different levels Britain should engage more with America, not just at the level of governments but at the level of people. We're in an Internet age now, people can debate with each other across the Atlantic by chatting on the Internet, sending emails, making contact with each other, and I think if we could build stronger cultural co-operation with universities, young people, organisations, scientific research, research into cancer, if we can build these links for the future, I think the relationship also be stronger and that will underpin the development of political co-operation in the years to come. I'm an optimist because I believe that the values we hold in common are far greater than anything that is in the past dividing us.

COURIC: Tony Blair stood solidly with President Bush on Iraq and Afghanistan. Are you as supportive of this war, particularly in Iraq, as your predecessor?

BROWN: Yes. We're moving to a position in Afghanistan where, as I say, more than 40 countries are now involved. When it comes to Iraq, it has been a more disputed issue because some of our European colleagues have not come down the same road as we've gone, but I think we're moving to a position in Iraq where-to-the areas where British troops are playing a big role, Basra and the south, where we can move from combat to what we call "overwatch," training the Iraqi troops for the future. We've seen a great deal of progress in the past few months, we've trained 40,000 police and soldiers for the Iraqis, we plan to train another 15,000, and then we look to provincial elections, Iraqis taking more of an interest in their affairs.

COURIC: There were 20,000 British troops at the time of the invasion, now there are only 2,000. You had planned to reduce that number but earlier this month you decided to put that on hold. Why?

BROWN: We put it on hold because there was tension in Basra itself. President Maliki had brought his own troops in, asserted power against the militias. We wanted to make sure the situation was stable again before we reduced our troops. Our plan is to reduce the numbers, as we've announced, over a period of time, but the role we're playing is already quite different. We're already training the Iraqi forces, training the police and the armed forces and we're putting a huge amount of effort into economic reconstruction so the Iraqis have a greater stake in their future. If we can move to local elections and persuade people who thought the militias was important for determining the future that actually the future is democracy and government, we're achieving the aims we set out to achieve, to build a Democracy in Iraq, economic reconstruction, Iraqis to be in control of their own affairs, their own army and police forces to be in charge. We will not reduce our troop numbers until we're satisfied we're moving down that road in a stable way.

COURIC: Were you disappointed with the performance of the Iraqi military during the recent conflict in Basra where your troops had to offer support?

BROWN: I think it's inevitable that the Iraqi army is building itself up over a period of time, it's right it should take more control over its own destiny, over the destiny of Iraq. We're supportive of what Mr. Maliki is trying to do. We gave air support, as did the Americans, to the Iraqi forces. Over time you'll see the Iraqis are in a position to take more control. In the next few months, I think you'll see them taking more military control, more policing and moving towards government. Iraqis have voted for democracy, millions of people came out to vote for it. To embed it as a local effort could be a great achievement.

COURIC: Do you have a timetable?

BROWN: No, because I don't think so it's right to do so. A lot depends on the military decisions on the ground, the advice we get from the commanders and how they see the situation. Our path is cleared that we want the Iraqis to take more control. As Gen. Petraeus has pushed out al Qaeda, so what we want to see in Basra is local people taking democratic control over their own affairs and pushing out the militias.

COURIC: The argument against pulling out too quickly all coalition troops is that the country will dissolve into a bloody civil war and Iran will happily fill a power vacuum. Is that a legitimate concern?

BROWN: No. There are huge difficulties first because you have al Qaeda operating in Iraq and you have influence over the border from Iran, and whether it's private arming of militias or other means, there's clearly a problem. But gradually we're seeing the Iraqis asserting more control over their own affairs and the positive thing about what's happening, certainly in the south in Basra where we're the lead player of the allied and coalition forces, the positive thing is that we have 40,000 armed and police forces trained. We'll have another 15,000 trained in the next few months. We'll have more people involved in economic reconstruction. We've putting in huge sums of money. I have a conference for investors in Basra held in London in the next few weeks. The combination of local control, local government itself and economic reconstruction, I think that is Iraqis and not Iranians, taking control of their own affairs. That's what we want to see.

COURIC: You talk about al Qaeda in Iraq. Many argue they wouldn't be there if the United States hadn't invaded. Having said that, what do you think is the most powerful lesson you have learned as a result of the Iraq war?

BROWN: I think there's a thirst for a Democracy amongst the people of Iraq. We have recognized that people want to be part of a democratic solution to their own problems and challenges. I think the lesson we've
learned from Iraq is one I think we have to apply whenever we're called upon to do things, whether it's in Africa or Afghanistan, that the reconstruction effort has to begin on day one. I think there is again a thirst in Iraq for people to be involved in their own economic destiny, to develop the oil resources and the other resources of Iraq. We haven't quickly enough, in my view, got people into jobs, so there's too much unemployment. We're trying to do a lot more now and we're having some success, but perhaps we should have started that earlier.

COURIC: Do you think invading Iraq was in fact the right thing to do?

BROWN: Yes, because Saddam Hussein had persistently and definitely ignored every resolution of the world community. The international community stood as one and demanded action from Saddam Hussein, he continuously thwarted the will of the international community. We have to look back to the events when all of the international community was united, before there was a division of opinion as to whether there should be action. He was refusing to go with the promises he'd already made from the past, and I think the democracy that's been created in Iraq is far better than the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

COURIC: I don't want to get into a big debate on the wisdom of the invasion, but when the international community was behind this military action, it's because they believed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and there was a feeling that he was involved with 9/11 or could be responsible for a second 9/11.

BROWN: From my point of view, and I think from the British government's point of view, the issue was always this, that he had made promises to the international community after his invasion of Kuwait, he had persistently defied the international community for years. Every effort we had made to change his mind, he had thwarted. That was the original basis for action. I know there's a subsequent debate about what happened and weapons and everything else, but the original complaint, and rightly so, is he had defied the will of the international community and that included the whole international community who believed that he had not performed as he had promised in changing his ways after his invasion of Kuwait.

COURIC: Let's move on to the next president. I know while you are in the United States you'll be meeting privately with each presidential candidate. You already know John McCain and Hillary Clinton, at least you have met them. What's your impression of John McCain?

BROWN: He's of course a great hero of his time for the courage he showed in Vietnam and subsequently. My discussions with John McCain have been about security and about the international institutions and how they can better deal with the issue of security. I've talked to him about the environment and his proposals on climate change, and of course he's a very experienced senator. It's been good to have these conversations with him.

COURIC: What about Hillary Clinton?

BROWN: Hillary Clinton of course I've known for a longer period of time. I actually knew Bill Clinton before he was president of America because we'd met at conferences previously. Clearly Hillary Clinton is putting forward, I think, a very strong argument about what action has to be taken to deal with the downturn in America and what has to be done to deal with particularly the problem of people who are losing their mortgages or people in danger of not being able to afford to pay their bills. It's clear that when you look at America at the moment, there are the issues, as in this country, that are domestic issues about the future of the economy and there are security issues also about the future of America's relationships to the rest of the world.

COURIC: You have yet to meet Barack Obama.

BROWN: Although I know many friends of his, and he kindly sent me a copy of his book when it was published. The reasons we haven't met before are an accident. Obviously I'm looking forward to meeting him. There's no doubt he has engaged a group of people in political action and consultation in America that previously had not been engaged and I think there are lessons for all of us in Europe and else were around the world.

COURIC: What are you hoping to hear from each of the candidates, what kind of assurances, what kind of direction?

BROWN: I think from my point of view to meet people who, whatever position they may hold next year, as individuals are all senior American political figures known throughout the world with enormous prestige and status already throughout the world. It's very important, so whatever jobs people are going to hold in the future, it's important as I have always done since I have been going to America for 25 years, meeting senators and people like Alan Greenspan, other people involved in the economy, it's very important that this dialogue between people across the Atlantic is not only maintained but strengthened. I do believe that the future of the next few years is stronger relationships between America and Europe. To build up that relationship with your senior people is incredibly important for Britain as it is for Germany, for France, for a new government in Italy. All these politicians and states, men and women, will benefit from that relationship. I think we have a lot to learn from new experiences, but I think the dialogue between the two continents can make a huge and important difference in the future.

COURIC: You're an outspoken advocate of free trade and yet on the campaign trail, particularly between the Democrats, there has been a great deal of protectionist rhetoric. Do you find that troubling?

BROWN: I can understand that as change is so fast and so far reaching in this new global economy, and let's say America and Europe have lost a million manufacturing jobs over the last year, that people will respond to the change that's taking place and say, "Look, can we not shelter our industries, protect ourselves against the loss of too many jobs overseas? After all, our workers are doing a good job making cars or steel or whatever; why is this change happening so quickly? Can we not do something about it?" My instinct is to understand people's worries about a global economy particularly in a period of global financial turbulence, but at the same time I think we have to look in the longer term at the benefits we get from an open economy. America can trade with any country in the world and should be able to, and so should Britain. The last world trade agreement brought huge prosperity to each continent as a result of us being able to trade with each other. There's no country in the world that has escaped poverty in Africa and Asia without being involved in trading with the rest of the world. The longer term issue is that can we persuade people that although it's difficult when you're facing a huge amount of change and jobs have been restructured and there's a great deal of off-shoring happening and people feel, although they're beneficiaries of global change, they're also victims …

COURIC: Jobs have been lost, not just restructured.

BROWN: That's right, but jobs are also being created all the time. America has this huge capacity, which I admire so much. Its entrepreneurial flare, ability to innovate, means that millions of jobs are being created as you're losing jobs in manufacturing or services. The benefits of free trade are not just for America but for the rest of the world. A world trade agreement in my view is essential to give confidence to the world that we can actually solve problems together. But of course you've got to deal with the problems that people face if have you to get a new skill, if you have to find a new job, if you have to move to a different area. In Britain, we would want to help people do that and we'll have mechanisms in place to give people extra support to train for a new job or extra support if the next job they get is not as well paying as the last one.

COURIC: Right now the United States and the UK have a lot in common economically: massive debt, a housing slump, a banking crisis. I know you'll be visiting Wall Street this week. What is your objective there?

BROWN: We have to agree certain things that we can do together. First of all, we have to get the disclosure and the transparency that's necessary so people know the write-offs have happened and we can move forward. The first thing we have to agree is that the financial institutions will deal with the off-balance sheet activities, get the write-offs out there in the open, and we must deal with that problem as soon as possible. That's the start to rebuilding confidence. I think we also need to understand that all continents will need to contribute to the maintenance of growth or the avoidance of a downturn. While America has got a program of tax cuts to release more money into the economy, we are maintaining our investment in public services, we are releasing money into the economy that way. Perhaps other continents have to learn that it's important that they play their part in doing so as well. I think we have to do something together about oil prices and food prices. I think people who are facing higher food bills at the moment and higher gasoline charges from garages in the States know that the oil price at a time when the world is growing more slowly should be coming down. Output from the OPEC countries should not be pushed down, it should be going up. In these areas, as in food prices, where we need to produce more food and stop the big increases in prices, if the world acts together, we can make a difference, get out of these problems more quickly and deal with them in a way that would benefit the American public and the European public.

COURIC: The U.S. housing crisis is having repercussions globally. How is it affecting your country?

BROWN: There's no doubt that off-balance sheet activities by the major institutions and in the sub-prime market more spectacularly have led to problems for the big institutions, these people are not lending money the way they used to. People are finding it harder to find mortgages; a small or medium-size business looking for funds has more problems. The way to deal with this is to get the write-offs out of the way, to get disclosure and transparency in place so we know what's gone on and we can move forward, but we have to have that happening in the next few weeks and months.

COURIC: How do you deal with it? Do you put more regulations in place at the federal level?

BROWN: It's about transparency and disclosure. The globalisation that's going to work is where we have open markets and free trade and flexibility and we invest in people's skills so they're well prepared for the new economy. It's not necessarily high-handed regulation; it's more about disclosure and transparency. We cleaned up the central banks in Asia after the Asian crisis in 1998 and I was involved in that and we required them to disclose the assets and the reserves and the liabilities. In the same way, I think we have to make sure the big financial institutions, banks and other institutions, have proper disclosure and that the mechanisms by which they disclose are well understood, independently validated, so we know what's out there and what's the problem. Having dealt with that, I think we can move on. There are signs that most of the good institutions want to do that, but I think it's going to become commonplace, not just in America but other countries in the world.

COURIC: Is that like asking the fox to guard the hen house? In other words, do you need more say? Should there be more things like cross-border banking supervision or more serious regulatory power?

BROWN: We're in a world with global capital flows, capital is moving across the world, intercontinentally, globally, but we only have national supervisors. We need the global supervision. It need not be heavy-handed regulations. It may only be a requirement to disclose what you're doing. I think the problem that we got to a year or two ago was that we had so much off-balance sheet not disclosed that a lot of the major banks and institutions didn't know themselves what their liabilities were. Having dealt with that problem, which I think we can by proper disclosure and doing it at a global level, I think we can move on because the benefits of open trade and the benefits of global flows are enormous in the long run for companies but also for individuals getting cheaper goods, cheaper services and a higher standard of living.

COURIC: The international monetary fund warned last week that this economic malaise could extend into 2009. Have we seen the worst of it or is there more bad news to come?

BROWN: There are still difficulties ahead. My own view, having been a finance minister before prime minister, is we can act quickly to deal with the problems. We know what to do with disclosure, oil prices, food prices, better global supervision, better free trade agreement. All these things will contribute to building confidence that we can move forward. The great thing about America, even when there are problems, you are quick to rebound, you are quick to come back, and in any other period when you've had a downturn, you've moved back to a position of growth very quickly with high levels of investments initially to show you actually mean business. I think despite all the difficulties we've got, there is still an enormous resilience in the global economy. Great entrepreneurs, dynamic innovators. I'm not pessimistic about the future. A lot of people say it's been America's century, it was Europe's before and now it's going to be China's century. When I look at the world, the creative talent, if they're in America and Europe, they're going to do well. Manufacturing may be done in a cheaper way in some other parts of the world, but where the wealth is going to be is with the people who have the knowledge and skills and creativity and entrepreneurability. America and parts of Europe do lead the way in that and we'll continue to lead the way if we have confidence in our ability to create the next set of inventions, the new innovations of the future. I'm positive about the future. The world economy will grow a lot in the next 10 years and America and Britain can have a very big lion's share of that new wealth.

COURIC: It seems as if your political fortunes are very much linked to the domestic economy here. According to a Financial Times poll out today, 68 percent of Britons were "not confident at all" in your government's ability to deal with the economic crisis.

BROWN: What happens when you have an economic problem is you go through a family of phases. The first phase is people say, "This problem, are we going to get through?" We have avoided recessions in Britain for the last ten years, even when America had one at the turn of the century, we avoided it. Peoples' natural response is to say, "Are we going to get through this? What will happen to my mortgage, my job, my business?" Then you go through that phase and people find you are taking the measures that are necessary to deal with the problem and we I think will move to that phase when people see that we're trying to help home owners and deal with the challenges of small businesses. I'm not complacent, never have been, we've always been vigilant, but I think it's true to say when you have a downturn and it affects all the world - this has come out of America, Western Europe, we've had a problem with one bank in Britain that's been in the public eye, but you do go through these phases. When people see we're taking what action we can, people will say that, just as in 1998, 2000, 2004 when we had problems, we came through them. So too I believe we'll come through the problems we have.

COURIC: Before you put too much blame on the United States, one expert said, "The UK followed the U.S. into Nevernever Land pushing mortgages out the door, believing prices would go up forever."

BROWN: I think when you look at the assets that people hold in housing and property and wealth generally, which have gone up recently and are still very valuable as against the debts they have, people are still in a far better position in prosperity than five or 10 years ago. Again, I'm more confident about the British economy than that suggests because, like America, we've created millions of jobs, we've created 3 million jobs in the last 10 years. We've got low inflation. The last time the world had this big downturn was the early 1990s. At that point, interest rates had to be at 15 per cent because inflation was at 10 per cent. We've got inflation to 2.5 percent and interest rates are a lot lower as a result of that. If you can keep inflation low, keep the economy going, people will soon see that the results are that although we've had a huge problem and it's a problem for every country and there is global financial turbulence, the measures we're taking with low inflation, low debt and the determination to keep the housing market moving will prove themselves to be worth while.

COURIC: As the equivalent of our Secretary of the Treasury, you presided over a ten-year period of unprecedented economic prosperity. Now that you're Prime Minister, do you ever feel as if you're a victim of lousy timing, created by circumstances that are beyond your control?

BROWN: I don't think you can ever predict the circumstances in which you're going to do a particular job and get them aligned to what you want them to be. We're going through global financial turbulence. The job of someone like me is to help deal with it. If I can show that we can deal with that, I think the public will understand that we've done a good job. We did have ten years of very strong economic growth in Britain. We moved from being 7th in the G7 to being second … only to America, so we've had a good period, but I believe that we will continue to see growth in the years to come as a result of the policies that we're pursuing. As I say, whether it's in relation to globalisation as a whole where I think people are too pessimistic about how it's going to work out for America and for Europe, or whether you're looking at the British economy now, I'm more optimistic about the future than some of the surveys suggest.

COURIC: How big a threat - thank you for speaking in a way that no normal non-economists …

BROWN: I try to.

COURIC: No, I'm grateful, really. How big a threat do you think this economic crisis is to your ability to lead? When I landed, the Guardian, which is quite sympathetic to the Labour Party, had this headline: "Labour's best way to recover might be for Brown to go."

BROWN: I think every politician goes through that. The question is: are you making the long-term decisions that are the right ones for your country? People then have to assess that at the appropriate moment. They say whether they think you're doing that or not. We've made big decisions about energy, transport, planning, housing, schools, science. We're making the right long-term decisions. If you go through periods when it's difficult to explain that and get a response from that because you have economic problems or other problems, then you have to understand that. The question is: are you doing the right think for the future of the country? I think we're trying to make the right decisions.

COURIC: You've decided not to attend the opening ceremony in Beijing for the Olympics. Your office said this is a scheduling issue, you had never planned to go?

BROWN: I was never going.

COURIC: Unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel, this is not a stand on principle?

BROWN: No. I have always said we would be present at the Olympics. As it happens, the Olympics are being handed over from Beijing to London so that London does it in 2012, so the appropriate ceremony for me to go to was always going to be the end ceremony. I am conscious in that debate that the Dalai Lama himself - and there's been a huge debate in recent weeks about Chinese attitudes to Tibet and what's going to happen - the Dalai Lama himself is not advising a boycott of the Olympics, he's not suggesting that people should not attend the ceremonies and I believe that it's the right thing to do for Britain to be present at that ceremony in the Olympics.

COURIC: No one has ever doubted your intellect, but you've been in the unenviable position of following in Tony Blair's footsteps. Do you think that has hurt your ability to win people over? Because, stylistically, you are quite different.

BROWN: I have worked with Tony for years and we're very good friends. We talk often about some of these things. I think after ten years of one party in government, you've obviously got to be able to respond to people saying, "Why is it not time for a change?" I think both of us faced that question. I think what I have got to show is that the challenges that this country has to meet in the future, not too dissimilar from the challenges that America has to meet - how you have energy security, how you can build a stronger economy in competition to China and India, how people can secure higher standards of living, better healthcare and education, a better and cleaner and greener future - you have to show people that you own the future by showing and demonstrating that you go can meet these challenges. It takes time to prove that, but that's really I think what the future's about.

COURIC: At the same time, people seem to be obsessed by your demeanor, that you're too serious or too dour, you never smile, then you make a philanthropic appearance on American Idol and you're criticized for smiling too much.

BROWN: That's life. You just have to accept that in politics.

COURIC: Doesn't it bug you?

BROWN: I don't think at the end of the day it's as important as … look, you know, you don't like bad headlines, do you? Nobody does. No channel or no company or no politician does. But at the end of the day, you have to keep asking yourself: are you listening to what people say? Are you responding to their aspirations? Are you making the right long-term decisions? Sometimes it takes time to explain them and sometimes people don't automatically think that that decision where you've spent or invested money in the long term when you could have given money away in the short term is the right one, but I think we're assured of that over a period of time.

COURIC: Are you chagrined that so many people seem to be focused on superficialities?

BROWN: I think politics -- because of 24-hour news, the story has to change every minute and every day and the newspapers are having to catch up with 24-hour news on media stations, and so there's an inordinate amount of interest in the small things that sometimes what you might call the day-to-day events that don't actually mean a huge amount for the longer term. I think I can understand why there's so much focus on individual issues, like concerns about how you say something or …

COURIC: How much you smile.

BROWN: … how much you smile. But at the end of the day, when people go to the ballot box, whether it's in America or Britain, I think they're more interested in who's going to be best for my long-term future. Who or which party is going to equip me or my family to be better prepared for the challenges ahead? Will the next generation have more prosperity than this one, and who will be able to deliver that? I think at the end of the day, these are the questions.

COURIC: Mark Penn, the American PR man and political consultant who was the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaign, has reportedly been meeting with some of your advisors. Is that true and what are they hoping to glean from him?

BROWN: I don't know about that, but he's been involved in British campaigns for years. He was involved in our last general election campaign in 2005, but we haven't signed anybody up for our next campaign.

COURIC: Let me ask you a couple of fun questions. On your trip to the United States, will you be visiting Cape Cod?

BROWN: Not this time unfortunately. I'm going to Boston, which is a great city with connections to the UK, but Cape Cod is where Sarah and I had our holidays before our children were born.

COURIC: I read it's one of your favorite places.

BROWN: It's a great place. Everyone's very kind, partly village life and partly you have access to all the facilities in the world and it's been great for sports. I love sports, whether it's watching baseball or swimming or whatever, and Cape Cod's a great environment. I like every part of America. I've visited almost all the main parts of America and find America a most friendly and great place to be. Over the period of years that I've been visiting America, I've built up great friendships with people and I admire the outward-looking way that America thinks about the world.

COURIC: Do you still play a lot of sports? You were quite the jock in your younger days.

BROWN: I did recently play a lot of tennis and running and swimming, but I injured myself playing rugby quite badly so I can't play rugby or football.

COURIC: What's on your iPod?

BROWN: I was talking to my young son about this today because he was wants to replace all the old Beatles and all that stuff and the stuff I have from the '60s, I have Bach as well, with the Ben Ten theme actually, the Transformer's songs, so I think I have to change my ways.

COURIC: We should mention, he's four.

BROWN: Yes, but he's more aware of things happening on the computer than I am.

COURIC: Finally, ideally, what would you like the American people to know about you?

BROWN: That I'm very pro-American and I've always been so. I feel America and Europe, and America and Britain in particular, because ours is a very special relationship, I feel that America and Britain can achieve so much in the next few years. When people talk about China and India and Asia, yes, there are changes taking place, but America and Britain working together and then America and Europe working together, we can change the global landscape in a way that deals with climate change, that makes for stronger economies where we don't have the sort of turbulence we're seeing at the moment by co-operating together and there's prosperity around the world to deal with problems like terrorism and violence and instability and conflict in a way that by co-operation we can achieve far more than if we leave it to fate. I think we make our own destiny and Britain and America have got a lot to do together.

COURIC: Prime Minister Gordon Brown, thank you so much.

BROWN: Thank you.

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