David Cameron Woos Wall Street CEOs In New York
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NEW YORK — British Prime Minister David Cameron met with Wall Street CEOs on Wednesday to press the case for doing business in the United Kingdom and later had "a meeting of minds" with the U.N. secretary-general on global challenges ranging from Afghanistan to Mideast peace.
On his first official visit to New York City, Cameron also rubbed elbows with media and political elites at a welcome dinner hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave the prime minister a new iPad.
The closed meeting with Wall Street CEOs included top executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley. The British consulate said the discussions focused on prospects for more trade and investment with the UK.
Cameron, who took office 10 weeks ago, went to U.N. headquarters in the early evening for his first meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who returned earlier in the day from Kabul, where he was co-chairman of an international conference on Afghanistan's future. At Tuesday's conference, foreign ministers and diplomats from the U.S. and 60 other countries endorsed President Hamid Karzai's plan for Afghan police and soldiers to take charge of security nationwide by 2014.
"We had a very successful conference in Kabul," Ban told Cameron as they posed for pictures before sitting down for talks that a British spokesman described as "a meeting of minds on the full range of current global challenges."
The two leaders "agreed that the current strategy in Afghanistan was right, and that a political surge was an essential part of the next phase of the campaign," said the spokesman, who by custom is not named.
The British leader and the U.N. chief also urged Israel and the Palestinians to move from U.S.-mediated indirect talks to direct peace talks and agreed on the need for "a concerted international effort to deliver a diplomatic solution on the Iran nuclear issue" and the "vital opportunity" at a U.N. summit in September "to get the world back on track" to meet U.N. goals to combat poverty, the spokesman said.
Cameron arrived in New York on Wednesday afternoon after a visit to Washington, where he met with President Barack Obama and discussed the war in Afghanistan at the Pentagon with U.S. officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn.
Cameron was greeted in New York by Bloomberg at a street corner just after he arrived. The pair grabbed hot dogs from a street vendor but ignored questions from reporters while they ate. Cameron did flash a thumbs-up when asked about his lunch.
He and Bloomberg wrapped up the day with another meal together – a more refined private dinner at the Upper East Side headquarters of the billionaire mayor's philanthropic foundation.
Bloomberg, who recently acquired an iPad and has become a prolific user, gave Cameron one of the devices as a gift, a Bloomberg aide said.
The guest list, provided to The Associated Press, included Whoopi Goldberg, Katie Couric, Diane von Furstenberg, Newt Gingrich, NBA commissioner David J. Stern and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh also attended, the aide said.
Guests were served grilled lamb chops, string beans and roasted fingerling potatoes and watched a private performance by Rufus Wainwright.
Cameron had hoped his first U.S. visit as prime minister would focus on trade and troop involvement in Afghanistan, but it has been overshadowed by questions of whether oil giant BP swayed Scotland's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.
Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, most of them American and many from the New York area. Last year the Scottish government released the cancer-stricken al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
The matter has received new attention because of accusations that BP helped influence the release of al-Megrahi as part of efforts to seek access to Libyan oil fields.
BP has acknowledged that it urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya but says it never specified al-Megrahi's case.
The four U.S. senators from New York and New Jersey met with Cameron on Tuesday to press for a new investigation.
In a solo appearance Wednesday, Bloomberg said that while al-Megrahi's release was a "miscarriage of justice," he said he had no plans to press the case further with Cameron.
"That's a federal issue and there's no reason why I would bring it up," he said.
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Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.
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SARA KUGLER FRAZIER 07/21/10 10:05 PM ET Associated Press