Transcript of Louis Susman interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

Andrew Marr interviewed US Ambassador Louis Susman on May 29th 2011.

ANDREW MARR:

Now this was the week, as we've just heard, when the "special" relationship became the "essential" relationship; when an American President barbecued burgers in the Downing Street garden and wowed his audience in Westminster Hall. "Political Beatle mania," was how one MP described it. Fom banqueting with the Queen to ping-pong with schoolboys, Barack Obama certainly got the front pages and the news images that he wanted. But now it's over, what did the state visit mean for the two nations' plans to make the world a more peaceful place? Well I'm joined now by a man who suddenly had to find a spare bed for the President: the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Louis Susman. Ambassador, good morning and welcome.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Good morning.

ANDREW MARR:

It is true about the bed?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well as a good diplomat and a good friend, I always have a bed for the President, for sure.

ANDREW MARR:

But he came over a day early, didn't he, because of the ash cloud …

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Yes he did, he did.

ANDREW MARR:

… so you had to put him up?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

We put him up. It was a pleasure.

ANDREW MARR:

I'm sure it was. Now it's got very good headlines and in most ways the visit seemed to go exactly, I suspect, as you'd want. But you were there during some of the sort of tough meetings, discussing the actual nitty-gritty of policy. The impression has been that the President wanted the Europeans, in particular, to take the lead with Libya, and there is now a slight worry in Washington about how it's going - how long it's taking, whether we're actually going to get rid of Gaddafi.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well I think, Andrew, that the President and the Prime Minister in the meetings I attended were both on the absolute same page. Would they have preferred that Colonel Gaddafi would have left last week? The answer's yes. Will he leave? We believe he will leave, and hopefully it will be sooner than later. But America, as President Obama said, is in this to the end, and that's what we'll do.

ANDREW MARR:

And yet the notion that there is some kind of special American firepower that can end this quickly is something the President has been quite keen to sort of quash.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well we're using some firepowers; you know we've had drones there and we are doing an immense amount of the refuelling and intelligence surveillance. So we think that it's moving along, but, as you would imagine, we wish it would move along a little faster.

ANDREW MARR:

Right. And it's clear now from everybody's side that Gaddafi has to go; that that is the end point; there has to be a regime change in Libya?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well the President says Gaddafi has to go …

ANDREW MARR:

Yeah.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

… and the Prime Minister says Gaddafi has to go, and now even the Russians are saying Gaddafi has to go. So it's pretty much of a unanimous opinion in the world. I've heard no-one say they want him to stay.

ANDREW MARR:

Let me ask you about the Afghan decision, which is also a very difficult one. The President said that he's going to talk to the Taliban and there are talks going on. There's even a story in one of today's papers saying that Bin Laden was found after talks with the Taliban, so there's clearly a process going on there. But how is the disengagement actually going to happen? Has there been sort of serious discussion about how troops start to pull out and the exact timescale? It's a difficult thing to do.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well I think there's obviously been very difficult and long and intense discussions. I don't think the President has finally made a decision, and when he does he'll announce it. But, as he said, we want to begin to pull down our troops in July on a condition basis concept; and I think he will take a final reading of that, then make his decision.

ANDREW MARR:

We all see the pageantry and the pomp and all the rest of it, but presumably these kind of state visits do have a lot of real work being done. And on Afghanistan, I wonder whether it's any clearer what's going to happen and what the plan is after those discussions between the President and the Prime Minister?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Well I would say the discussions are obviously confidential …

ANDREW MARR:

Sure.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

… and I don't think I can comment on them, but I do feel that the President and the Prime Minister are on the same page.

ANDREW MARR:

But useful and substantive beyond being …

LOUIS SUSMAN:

I think so.

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh. What about the … I don't know if they discussed this, but what about the two versions of how to leave the economic problems of the credit crunch and stuff behind because clearly there is quite a gap between the way this government is dealing with it in Britain - cutting faster and further perhaps than the American government would contemplate - and how things are going in the States?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

I think, Andrew, the focus was mainly on one just of relationships and the Queen and the state visit. Second, on the foreign affairs matters. And while the economic issues were discussed, I feel that our method of going about it and the British method of going about it have the same objective in the end. We've got to get our balance sheets and get our economies and our deficits in order, and I think that the President and the Prime Minister are keenly attuned to getting that done.

ANDREW MARR:

When the President first became President, there was a great deal of slightly kind of chippy, worried comment on this side of the Atlantic about he doesn't really like us, it's all to do with his Kenyan grandfather and the way we treated him and the Churchill bust and all the rest of it. Do you think this visit has ended that worry for good?

LOUIS SUSMAN:

I hope so. I actually read one of your newspaper commentaries that started out by saying how could we ever believe that he didn't love us? And I think, I hope that is the mantra going forward. This President has a great deal of affection, a great deal of admiration, and a great deal of commonality with this government and the Queen and with the people of England, and I think it showed on this visit.

ANDREW MARR:

People of Britain, Ambassador.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Britain, oh yes.

ANDREW MARR:

Thank you very, very much indeed for joining us after what has clearly been a very successful visit.

LOUIS SUSMAN:

Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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