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Mr Brown says that the relationship between Britain and America is "built on the things we share, the same enduring values about the importance of liberty, opportunity, the dignity of the individual". Just add justice and human rights, and that accurately sums up my own relationship with my American colleagues. These are the values - universal values - that Human Rights Watch was established to promote and protect. Human Rights Watch has shown how US and UK approaches to terrorism have, in defiance of international standards, led to the watering down of exactly the values of liberty, justice and human dignity of which Mr Brown and his ministers speak.

Since October last year I have worked as the London director of Human Rights Watch, an organisation which was founded by Americans, is based in New York, and is funded mostly by American philanthropists. In my opinion, Human Rights Watch represents what is best about America.

Mr Brown says that the relationship between Britain and America is "built on the things we share, the same enduring values about the importance of liberty, opportunity, the dignity of the individual". Just add justice and human rights, and that accurately sums up my own relationship with my American colleagues. These are the values - universal values - that Human Rights Watch was established to promote and protect.

It is in defence of these values that we document and expose the egregious human rights abuses that are perpetrated in places such as North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Chechnya, Tibet and Uzbekistan. But it is also in defence of these shared values that we have had to spend more and more time and energy in recent years documenting and exposing the human rights failings of the United States and Britain in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.

In particular Human Rights Watch has shown how US and UK approaches to terrorism have, in defiance of international standards, led to the watering down of exactly the values of liberty, justice and human dignity of which Mr Brown and his ministers speak. Around the world the United States has practised torture, arbitrary detention, and extraordinary rendition and has condoned such practices on the part if its allies. The UK has often either been complicit in these abuses or failed to confront them.

From the beginning we believed that these policies were not only morally wrong, but were disastrously, counterproductively wrong. Many in the UK and in the United States now agree. The latest US National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist violence, released on July 17, will have done nothing to dent the growing conviction across political parties that policies justified in the name of national security have undermined the national security of both our countries.

Across the Muslim world, the US and the UK are losing the battle of hearts and minds which, as Mr Brown likes to point out, is so crucial a part of counterinsurgency operations, especially one waged against an international terrorist network in an age of jet travel, mobile phones and the internet.

Mr Brown knows he must distance himself from the failing counter-terrorism policies of Tony Blair and George Bush. But he has yet to acknowledge outright that those policies have failed precisely because they have undermined exactly the values and ideals that he says he believes in.

When he meets President Bush today, Mr Brown can deal with the issues of values and counter-terrorism in three different ways.

He can drop the talk of values altogether and have a businesslike conversation about US-UK cooperation in counter-terrorism based on a narrow assessment of the UK's national interests. That's the diplomatic option.

He can say that his relationship with Bush is based on shared values. That's the head-in-the-sand option. It would send a signal not only that Mr Brown has not, after all, learned from the mistakes of his predecessor, but also that the UK's complicity in abuses carried out by the US government in the name of counter-terrorism will continue.

Or Mr Brown can speak up for the values that underpin the special relationship and point out that the US administration's practices of torture, disappearances, and arbitrary detention are wrong and misguided and are losing us the struggle against Islamic extremism. That's the principled and courageous option.

It is time to break the axis of abuse that acts as a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida and has increased worldwide animosity towards the United States and its UK ally. Brown's visit to Washington is a really good place to start.

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