New British Foreign Secretary David Miliband insisted today that the United States was still Britain's number one ally.
Mr Miliband was seeking to quash speculation that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown may be distancing London from Washington because of the negative legacy left by Tony Blair's premiership over the war in Iraq.
"It is the single most important bilateral relationship," Mr Miliband told BBC Television in his first broadcast interview since taking office.
"Our commitment to work with the American government in general and the Bush administration in particular is resolute," he said, stressing there was no change in tone.
Since Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair as British prime minister last month, he has been at pains to underline there will be no cooling of Anglo-American relations - but two of his ministers have offered mixed signals.
Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said in a speech in Washington that while Britain stood beside the US in fighting terrorism, isolationism did not work in an interdependent world.
Then Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown followed up in a weekend interview by saying that Britain had to nurture a wider range of allies and predicting London and Washington would no longer be "joined at the hip".
Mr Blair's decision to back President George W Bush over Iraq sent his popularity plummeting and contributed to his departure after a decade in power. He was lampooned as "Bush's poodle".
The change of leader has prompted speculation that Britain might accelerate troop withdrawals from Iraq. Britain has been gradually reducing numbers and now has about 5,500 troops in the south.
When pressed on troop plans, Mr Miliband refused to get drawn into a "the prediction game."
The new foreign secretary launched a weekend media blitz to quell talk of a policy shift. Writing in the News of the Worldtoday, he said there would be no change to the "special relationship" between London and Washington.
"With a new Brown government, some people are looking for evidence that our alliance is breaking up. There isn't any and there won't be any," he wrote.
Mr Brown is flying to Berlin for talks tomorrow and plans to visit Paris and Washington after that. He has said he will continue to work closely with the US administration.
"We'll not allow people to separate us from the United States of America in dealing with the common challenges we face around the world," he said, when asked to comment on minister Douglas Alexander's words