British PM David Cameron, Obama Talk BP, Lockerbie Bomber and Beer

On Tuesday, recently elected British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for his first White House tete-a-tete with President Barack Obama. While such potentially divisive topics as the BP oil spill and the Lockerbie bomber were on tap, the two leaders spent much of their joint press conference reaffirming the "special relationship" between their respective countries. Obama said the two countries saw "eye to eye on virtually every issue" while Cameron referred to it not just as a "special relationship" but an "essential one."

Showing a keen understanding that nothing does more for bilateral relations than beer and burgers, Obama kicked off the joint appearance by explaining that he had sent Cameron some of his hometown brew, Chicago's 312 Beer. Cameron, in turn, volunteered that the quaff was so good, it got him cheering for United Kingdom rival Germany in the World Cup games. "That's a big admission for a British person to make," Cameron said, "so the beer is obviously very effective."

Beer aside, trans-Atlantic tensions surrounding the British oil company's liability for the Deepwater Horizon spill were raised during the meeting. Cameron sympathized with American anger and called on BP to pay "appropriate compensation." But, he also sought to dampen American outrage, saying "BP is an important company to both the British and American economies. Thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic depend on it. So it's in the interest of both our counties that it remains a strong and stable company in the future."

BP has confirmed that it lobbied the British government to expedite the release of Libyan prisoners in order to finalize a drilling agreement with Libya, but the company denied that it tried to intervene in the case of Abdel Baset Mohamed al-Megrahi, convicted for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people -- including 189 Americans and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, where the plane went down.

BP has said the Scottish government made the decision to release al-Megrahi.

Cameron said he and Obama were in "violent agreement" about the case and added that the decision to release al-Megrahi was "completely wrong." But the U.K. leader cast doubt on any role the company may have played in al-Megrahi's release, saying, "We haven't seen any evidence that the Scottish government was swayed by BP."

Cameron acknowledged calls from U.S. Senate leadership for a full investigation into the Lockerbie case, promising his government would extend "proper cooperation" to any hearings. He noted that the British cabinet secretary "should identify those documents that should be published. ... In my view, there is absolutely no harm to be done in giving the fullest possible explanation of the circumstances surrounding this decision." But he insisted that a full British inquiry was unnecessary, saying, "I don't need an inquiry to tell me what was a bad decision." He added: "The key thing is to get the information out there so people can see. I don't think there's any great mystery here."

Obama was more opaque about whether he might call for a full U.S. investigation into al-Megrahi's release. He said he would "welcome any new information that will give us insights and better understanding of why the decision was made" but expected that "with all the facts out, I think we're going to be back to where we are right now: It was a decision that should not have been made and one that we should learn from going forward."

Beyond BP and Lockerbie, the two leaders reaffirmed their like-minded views on everything from the global financial crisis and recovery to the war in Afghanistan. Obama described British and U.S. troops as "fighting shoulder to shoulder," and Cameron recalled the longstanding cooperation between the two military forces as something "never to forget, whether it's on the beaches of Normandy, whether it's in Korea, whether in Iraq or whether now in Afghanistan."