LONDON: Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Saturday he was `open` to the UK issuing a formal apology for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, but ruled out financial reparations.

Writing in The Guardian days before attending a Commonwealth leaders summit in the Caribbean, and as King Charles III tours the region, the British premier argued that `we need to face up to the past`. With London under pressure to formally apologise for its pivotal part in the trade and compensate Caribbean nations, he pledged to have `difficult conversations to safeguard the Commonwealth for the future`.

Burnham said he wanted to `express my sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering of so many millions and to recognise the way it still shapes our world today`, but insisted reparations were not `the right answer`.

`I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happene d in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part,` he wrote in the op-ed. The transatlantic slave trade was a `brutal and barbaric violation` of enslaved people`s rights, the UK leader added, offering a `structured dialogue with those affected`.

`Listening to calls for a formal apology on behalf of the British state will form an important part of this process and I am open to them.` Burnham also revealed he planned to launch a new debt restructuring drive for the poorest Commonwealth countries, led by former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown.

He vowed to work with `global partners` to help those countries repay `over a longer time period and with better rates`.-AFP