Romney looks to build ties with British leaders

LONDON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is visiting Britain's leaders, with the Olympics Games as a backdrop, as he seeks to send a message that he recognizes the close bonds between the U.S. and its top ally — and to project an image of leadership.

Romney's first official appearances during a campaign swing intended to highlight longtime U.S. alliances were to be with British Prime Minister David Cameron and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Republican also is slated to meet with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour Party. Romney, a former private equity executive, also requested a meeting with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Britain's top financial official.

"We have a very special relationship between the United States and Great Britain," Romney told NBC News in an interview in London on the first day of a weeklong overseas trip that will also take him to Israel and Poland. "It goes back to our very beginnings — cultural and historical."

Romney, whose decades in private business gave him ample exposure to international affairs, is a former one-term governor of the state of Massachusetts untested on the world's political stage. To that end, he hopes to persuade voters back home that he is no novice on foreign affairs and that they should elect him as president in a complex, dangerous world.

The trip follows Romney's criticism Tuesday of Democratic President Barack Obama's foreign and military policy, including charges that the White House sought political gain by leaking classified details of the military raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The close presidential race has taken a sharp detour from its focus on the struggling U.S. economy that has stubbornly high 8.2 percent unemployment more than three years after Obama took office. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published Tuesday showed Romney leading Obama 43 percent to 36 percent on the issue of which candidate is seen as better equipped to improve the economy.

The same poll showed Obama is viewed as a better commander in chief, 45 percent to 35 percent. Last week, a CBS News/New York Times poll found 47 percent of voters said Obama would do a better job handling foreign policy, while 40 percent chose Romney. Romney hopes to change that with his overseas trip.

Romney will spend part of his time in London raising money and highlighting a key part of his resume — the successful Salt Lake City Olympics he managed — with an appearance Friday at the opening ceremonies of the London Games.

Thursday's highlight was to be the planned series of meetings — and photo events — with Britain's political leaders, designed to portray the Republican presidential challenger as a plausible world leader.

Meeting with British officials is typically one of the first priorities of any new president, and establishing those relationships beforehand can help smooth any transition. To that end, it's typical for American presidential candidates to meet with British leaders during the campaign; Obama did so when he took a trip abroad as the likely Democratic nominee in 2008.

This isn't the first time Romney will meet Cameron. The two also talked during a Romney visit to London in 2011. This year, Cameron traveled to the U.S., where he met Obama and attended a state dinner in Washington. He did not meet with Romney.

Romney's meeting with a deputy prime minister is somewhat unusual. It's happening because Britain has a coalition government, and Clegg's Liberal Democrats govern alongside Cameron's Conservative Party.

The meetings come a day after the Daily Telegraph newspaper published a story quoting an unidentified Romney campaign adviser saying the Republican believes the U.S. relationship with Britain is special because of shared "Anglo-Saxon heritage" and that the White House doesn't appreciate that shared history.

Romney, however, quickly distanced himself from any such view.

"I don't agree with whoever that adviser might be," Romney told NBC News, "but do agree that we have a very common bond between ourselves and Great Britain."

Nonetheless, Vice President Joe Biden and top Obama aides criticized Romney. "The comments reported this morning are a disturbing start to a trip designed to demonstrate Gov. Romney's readiness to represent the United States on the world's stage," Biden said.

Later on Thursday, Romney planned to hold a high-dollar fundraiser at the swanky Mandarin Oriental hotel in London's tony Knightsbridge district. One of the hosts of that fundraiser, former Barclays CEO Ian Diamond, withdrew from the event after he resigned in the wake of a rate-rigging scandal wracking British banks.