THE high-stakes diplomacy before this week’s G8 summit in Scotland and tomorrow’s vote on staging the 2012 Olympics exploded last night into a bout of international mudslinging.
An astonishing diplomatic blunder by Jacques Chirac soured relations with the UK after it emerged that he had mocked Britain’s cooking and reputation for trustworthiness.
His comments, made during a private conversation with President Putin of Russia and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, were overheard and printed in the Libération newspaper yesterday.
“The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is ‘mad cow’ disease,” M Chirac said of the British. “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland,” he told amused colleagues during a meeting in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on Sunday.
M Chirac’s remarks are being seized upon as evidence of “Old Europe’s” true feelings towards Britain when relations have been severely strained by the budget row at last month’s European Union summit.
Tensions of a different kind spilled out on to the streets of Edinburgh before the summit opens tomorrow. Anarchist protesters and police fought running battles which lasted six hours and left about 20 people injured. There were more than 90 arrests in the clashes which police blamed on a hard core of 1,000 militants.
British officials acknowledged yesterday that “pretty intense discussions” were going on before the Gleneagles summit, in which Tony Blair is pressing for significant concessions on African poverty and climate change.
“You are getting to a stage where there has to be a bit of give and take and that is always a very difficult position to be in,” Sir Michael Jay, the Government’s chief negotiator said.
In Singapore, where London and Paris are contesting the right to stage the 2012 Olympics, sources close to the London bid hoped that M Chirac’s indiscretions would help their case in tomorrow’s vote, which is seen in the city state as a head-to-head between the two. While Britain and France will not participate in the early voting, Finland will have two votes in play.
The French President arrives today — two days after Mr Blair — to give a final push to the French bid. Mr Blair’s spokesman reacted with disdain to the comments, saying: “There are some things that are better not responded to.”
But the Prime Minister referred sarcastically to the faux pas at a reception at the British High Commission last night: “I won’t say that the G8 summit would be an anticlimax because that would be undiplomatic. I know when I go there I will be in the presence of very diplomatic people.”
Mr Blair had needled M Chirac by writing an article in Le Figaro on the case for reforming EU farm subsidies, a proposal that the French President rejects. “Debating Europe does not mean exchanging insults,” Mr Blair wrote. “Nor does it mean branding those who want change traitors to the European ideal.”
In London, ministers tried to keep a lid on tensions before the summit. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, insisted that an agreement on climate change was still possible, despite comments by President Bush.
Mr Straw also held talks with Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, over Britain’s plan to double aid to Africa over five years. Mr Fischer rejected reports that Germany was refusing to help to fund the increase.
In Singapore, London’s Olympic team suffered its own embarrassment when the French claimed that it had made derogatory comments about the Stade de France, Paris’s proposed main stadium.
Two Australian consultants to the London bid said that there was no advantage in the fact the Paris stadium was built. The other said that although he had enjoyed watching rugby at the Stade de France, rugby was not an Olympic sport.
The French said that London had broken rules preventing bidders criticising each other. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, apologised to the French “if any offence has been taken”.
The French were also upset that London has drafted in David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, to back its bid. Paris had wanted to bring in Zinedine Zidane, one of its leading footballers, but were told that this would be inappropriate.
Mr Blair said that he hoped he would be commiserating with, not congratulating, M Chirac over the Olympics at the start of the G8 summit.
In his conversation at the Hotel Rus in Kaliningrad, M Chirac made gibes about British protocol and Scottish delicacies. He said that the British had reproached him for making the Queen wait during his visit to London last year, but said that it was the British who managed protocol poorly.
He also recalled that Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the former Nato Secretary-General, had made him taste haggis. “From that you get to our difficulties with Nato,” he said.
