Britain moved on Wednesday to prevent a diplomatic row with the United States over the April G20 summit after its top civil servant said the transition to a new team in Washington was hampering preparations.
Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell told a civil servants' meeting earlier this week that liaison with the U.S. Treasury Department was tricky because key appointments had yet to be made.
"There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is," O'Donnell said in remarks carried on a website specialising in news about the civil service.
The U.S. Treasury has several key posts unfilled more than a month after President Barack Obama was sworn in and pledged that his economic team, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, would fight the crisis full-on.
Britain is preparing to host the G20 summit of developed and emerging nations in London on April 2, a meeting it hopes will secure agreement on measures to combat the financial crisis.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week became the first European leader to meet Obama since the president took office in January.
"The Cabinet Secretary was talking at a public service conference," O'Donnell's office said in a statement.
"His comments — a comparison of the appointments systems in the UK and US administrations — were taken out of context. The government's relationship with the Obama administration is strong, and working relationships are good at every level."
Separately, Brown's office rejected criticism that a focus on "red herring" issues such as bankers' bonuses and tax havens risked turning the G20 summit into a "catastrophe".
The Financial Times newspaper quoted Martin Broughton, president of employers' group the Confederation of British Industry, as saying it would be "nothing short of a catastrophe, when you've got an opportunity to make a difference, that you get bogged down" in irrelevant issues.
"We don't accept that at all," Brown's spokesman said.
The summit will deal with world economic issues but it is also important to examine bankers' pay, he said.
He said there were "clearly different views" in the debate over protectionism versus free trade. Brown wants a strong commitment from the summit to keep markets open.
The spokesman dismissed another newspaper report that the summit could cost British taxpayers 50 million pounds ($69 million), saying the official estimate was 19 million pounds.
Geithner will attend a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in southern England on Friday and Saturday. His call for other countries to emulate Washington's huge fiscal stimulus drew a cool response from European nations.
