WASHINGTON/LONDON - US President Barack Obama, seeking to demonstrate strong leadership on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, demanded on Wednesday that BP set aside billions of dollars to pay damages from the catastrophe.

A day after he vowed to fight the spill "with everything we've got", Obama was to meet at the White House with the energy group's executives, the first time he has done so since the crisis began nearly two months ago.

The spill - which Obama called the worst environmental disaster the US has ever faced - threatens to distract him from a domestic agenda of bringing down nearly double-digit US unemployment and reforming Wall Street.