WASHINGTON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush, a spokesman for the British embassy here said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, pictured in London, has arrived in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush, a spokesman for the British embassy said. [AFP]

Blair is to go to the White House early Thursday for a "breakfast meeting" with the US president, embassy spokesman PJ Johnstone told AFP. He said the prime minister issued no statement on his arrival in the United States.

Blair, Bush's closest ally in the Iraq war, and the US leader are to consider dwindling options on war-torn Iraq and discuss the stalled Middle East peace process.

Their meeting comes a day after a report by a top-level US commission, the Iraq Study Group, warned that even a sharp US policy shift in Iraq may not avert a regional conflagration.

"The two leaders have have a number of issues to discuss, including Iraq, the broader war on terror, the NATO commitment to Afghanistan, Sudan as well as free and fair trade," Bush's national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said on the eve of Blair's visit.

US and British officials have steadfastly denied that the visit by Blair was timed to coincide with the release of the grim report by the Iraq Study Group that calls for a strategy overhaul.

White House officials said a frenetic schedule over the past month -- with the November US congressional elections, and Bush trips to Asia, Europe and the Middle East -- had stymied long-standing plans for the two to meet.

But the report -- which bluntly says Bush's Iraq policy is "not working," warns that the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating" and calls for most US combat troops to be withdrawn by early 2008 -- was to dominate their roughly hour-long meeting.

The two leaders, shoulder-to-shoulder on the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, have opposed setting a timetable for pulling out US and British forces.

But they also had some disputes, notably on climate change with Bush's resistance to set limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, and tensions over how connected the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is to Iraq.

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