UK Govt: BP Must "Sort Out" Oil Spill Disaster

11th Jun 2010 11:55

LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has not changed his view that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a matter for BP PLC (BP) to resolve, his spokesman said Friday. "The prime minister has not changed his views on the issue," the spokesman told reporters. "Clearly, BP has got to sort this out." The spokesman said that conversations continue at an official level between the U.K. and U.S. government over the oil spill. The spokesman said Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, had spoken with his U.S. counterpart in recently but declined to give details. Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama are due to speak this weekend--their first telephone conversation since the U.S. president called Cameron the evening he became prime minister on May 11. In the first public sign of British government support for BP amid heightened criticism in the U.S., Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne told The Wall Street Journal Thursday that "we need constructive solutions" to the oil spill. Osborne said Cameron had asked him to call BP chief executive Tony Hayward Thursday. "The Prime Minister is clear that we need constructive solutions and that we remember the economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America," he said in an emailed statement to the Wall Street Journal. -By Alistair MacDonald and Laurence Norman, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-207-842-9270; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 11, 2010 06:55 ET (10:55 GMT)