Mitt Romney To Meet David Cameron On Thursday, Downing St Confirms

Romney To Meet Cameron On Eve Of Games
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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will meet David Cameron in No 10 on Thursday, Downing Street has confirmed.

Romney will hold talks with the prime minister on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, giving the former businessman and governor of Massachusetts a chance to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

With less than four months to go until the November presidential elections, Romney is also due to hold a fundraising dinner while in London with seats at the event costing between $25,000 and $75,000.

Romney, who ran the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, is due to attend the London Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday.

And he will be joined in London by his wife Anne, whose dressage horse Rafalca will be competing in the Olympics as part of the US Equestrian Team.

Romney is also due to meet Nick Clegg, George Osborne and William Hague as well as Labour leader Ed Miliband and former prime minister Tony Blair.

London is the first stop on a six-day trip abroad for Romney, a tour that will inevitably be compared to Barack Obama's pre-election 2008 visit to Europe that included an address to a crowd of 200,000 Germans in Berlin.

In June, Hague said the Olympic Games would be a chance for the government to build relationships with foreign leaders.

"The Olympic and Paralympic games are first and foremost a festival of sport and a celebration of human sporting endeavour," he said.

"But we welcome the opportunity that the games present to demonstrate Britain's qualities to the world and will work to ensure that those that visit us have the best possible experience of their time here. We hope that stronger bilateral relationships will be part of the legacy of the games."

In May the Romney campaign was forced to deny suggestions that several of its senior officials were unhappy with Cameron's recent visit to Washington.

An aide to Romney is said to have told the Guardian that the campaign was dismayed by the "love in" between the prime minister and Obama, accusing Cameron of taking sides during an election season.