Gordon Brown will not hold one-to-one talks with President Obama during his four-day trip to the United States, but British officials deny that he has been snubbed.

The Prime Minister was flying to New York today to chair a round-table discussion at a UN climate summit and accept a "world statesman of the year" award. He will also speak at the UN General Assembly before heading to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit.

Mr Brown last addressed the General Assembly two years ago, soon after assuming the role of Prime Minister. On that visit he was taken to Camp David for extensive talks with President Bush.

Mr Obama, who made clear his displeasure at the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, has cleared his diary for a lunch with African leaders today. He is also due to hold bilateral meetings with the leaders of China, Russia and Japan.

But he is not going to hold a formal meeting with Mr Brown, although British officials point out that the two will meet at various occasions over the week.

Mr al-Megrahi's release last month on compassionate grounds - he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer - provoked fury among relatives of the 180 Americans who died on Pan Am Flight 103 victims, which was brought down over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in December 1988.

The White House said that the release was a mistake and called Mr al-Megrahi's triumphant homecoming "disgusting".

But the official Downing Street line that the decision had been taken purely by the Scottish government did not appear to carry much weight - especially among commentators and leader writers who laid the blame firmly on Mr Brown.

The New York Daily News ran a particularly vitriolic editorial headlined "Brown the Betrayer" which said that the al-Megrahi affair and Mr Brown's sanctioning of an "oil-for-terrorist deal" had hammered the final nail into the coffin of the special relationship.

Meanwhile, the Scottish government welcomed a comment by a US official that the United States wanted to "move on" from the Lockerbie release row and said it was looking forward to improving ties with Washington.

A US State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, told BBC's Newsnight programme that the United States was "not looking to punish anyone" over Scotland's decision to free Mr al-Megrahi. "There is no tit for tat here," he added.

“Scotland and the United States enjoy long and enduring links,” a Scottish government spokesman said. “Our close ties socially, economically and academically have continually worked for the benefit of all of our people and we look forward to that relationship continuing to strengthen."

Today’s proceedings in New York will focus on climate change with the Prime Minister co-chairing the meeting of a working group on the issue. Mr Brown has already announced his readiness to attend the crunch UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December amid growing concern that time is running out for a new deal to cut damaging greenhouse gas emissions.

He will address the General Assembly tomorrow, competing for attention not just with Mr Obama, President Medvedev of Russia and President Ahmadinejad of Iran but also with the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

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