Washington  - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was to talk with the three candidates hoping to succeed President George W Bush before be meets with the current White House occupant later Thursday.

Brown was to hold separate meetings at the British embassy with Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and also with the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, the embassy said.

Brown has adopted a more distant relationship to Bush than his predecessor, Tony Blair, in part by pledging to draw down the size of British forces in Iraq beyond 2,000. The move, however, was put on hold when violence broke out in southern Iraq last month.

Brown's desire to begin withdrawals in Iraq would be welcomed by Clinton and Obama, who have vowed on the campaign trail to outline a pullout plan once they take the White House.

McCain backed Bush's troop surge and is more likely to stay the course in Iraq. The British embassy had not provided details of the meetings.

Brown heads to the White House later for talks with Bush on the sluggish global economy, war on terrorism, the conflict in Iraq and the effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Brown, in an interview with CBS earlier this week, said he still believed invading Iraq was the right decision because Saddam Hussein "thwarted the will" of the United Nations.

"He was refusing to go with the promises he'd already made from the past, and I think the democracy that's been created in Iraq is far better than the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein," he said.

Brown has previously met Clinton and McCain. He praised McCain as a "great hero" for the courage he showed as a prisoner during the war in Vietnam and noted their previous discussion of the need to strengthen international institutions for improving global security.

Brown welcomed Clinton's campaign plan to shore up the sluggish US economy as a "very strong argument about what action has to be taken" to halt the economic woes.

Brown has never met Obama, calling it an "accident" but that he looks forward to meeting the candidate, who has a slight lead over Clinton for the Democratic nod.

"There's no doubt he has engaged a group of people in political action and consultation in America that previously had not been engaged and I think there are lessons for all of us in Europe," Brown said.(dpa)