REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama on Monday said Britain's membership in the European Union was an expression of its influence in the world and urged Britons to watch whether EU reforms were successful before deciding to leave the multi-nation bloc.

"I think the UK's participation in the EU is an expression of its influence and its ... role in the world," Obama said during a news conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House.

Obama backed Cameron's comments that Britain should work on EU reform before making a decision on whether to pull out.

"Ultimately the people of the UK have to make decisions for themselves," Obama said.

"I will say this, that David's basic point that you probably want to see if you can fix what's broken in a very important relationship before you break it off makes some sense to me."

PM Cameron moves

British Prime Minister David Cameron moved to end a damaging revolt over European Union membership in his ruling Conservative party on Monday, saying his ministers all backed him on the issue even though two had expressed more skeptical views than his own.

Cameron's promise to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU and hold a plebiscite on membership if he wins the next election in 2015 has failed to end his party's divisions over Europe or halt the rise of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Cameron is keen to unite his party on Europe, an issue that helped bring down Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher and dogged her successor John Major, another Conservative.

Two cabinet ministers suggested on Sunday they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held today, while Cameron has always said he wants Britain to stay in a reformed EU.

A powerful wing of his own party worried about losing votes to UKIP is pushing him to enshrine his promise of a referendum in law now. However, Cameron cannot do so because his pro-EU junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, oppose such a move.

Despite a growing clamor in his party to harden his line on Europe, Cameron stuck to his pledge to try to reform Britain's EU role, saying it was "very, very strange" to give up before renegotiation talks have begun.

"I don't think that the status quo in the EU is acceptable today," Cameron told reporters in Washington, where he was meeting President Barack Obama to support the case for a U.S.-EU trade deal.

"I want to change it and, having changed it, I then want to ask the British people a very simple in/out question."

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