David Cameron hopes to meet George Bush for the first time on a visit to Washington next week.

If it goes ahead, it will be the first time that the President has met a Conservative leader for six years and will be hailed by the Tories as a coming of age on the world stage for Mr Cameron.

A Conservative party spokeswoman refused to confirm any details but it is understood that Mr Cameron is flying to the US capital next Wednesday, accompanied by William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Internal briefing documents say only that the Tory leader is scheduled to meet “senior Republican figures” after delivering a foreign policy lecture at Georgetown University. But senior Tory officials say that negotiations with the White House about a meeting with the President are at an advanced stage. Mr Cameron’s aides have been preparing for an encounter with Mr Bush for months and are now confident that it will go ahead.

The chances of a meeting have risen with recent polls putting the Tories in the lead, according to senior Conservative figures. “The timing couldn’t be better,” said one.

The close relationship between Tony Blair and Mr Bush and the unpopularity of the Iraq war have clouded relations between Conservatives and Republicans in recent years. Iain Duncan Smith was the last Tory leader to be granted a meeting with the President, when he was given 45 minutes with Mr Bush shortly after he took over from Mr Hague in 2001. Criticism from Michael Howard of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq culminated in the sudden cancellation of a proposed meeting in 2004.

The departure of Mr Blair and the attempts by Gordon Brown to forge a less personal relationship with the President have led to a recalculation on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Hague, George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, and Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, have been mending fences with the White House for some time.

The political differences between Mr Cameron and Mr Bush have narrowed since the election of the Tory leader in 2005. The acknowledgement of climate change by the White House and Mr Cameron’s continuing support for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have helped to clear the way for a resumption of relations.

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