PRESIDENT BUSH has been told to muzzle Donald Rumsfeld, his provocative Defence Secretary, if he wants to ease European misgivings about war with Iraq.

José María Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, spoke for many European diplomats and officials, including the British, when he delivered the message while staying at Mr Bush’s Texas ranch last weekend.

“I did tell the President that we need a lot of Powell and not much of Rumsfeld,” said Señor Aznar, referring to Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State. “Ministers of Defence should talk less, shouldn’t they? The more Powell speaks and the less Rumsfeld speaks, that wouldn’t be a bad thing altogether.”

Señor Aznar is the first leader to voice publicly what many Europeans supportive of confronting Baghdad feel strongly in private: that Mr Rumsfeld has made their diplomatic work much harder.

The Spanish leader is thought to have been particularly perturbed by Mr Rumsfeld’s recent comparison of Germany’s “do nothing” approach to Saddam Hussein with that of Libya and Cuba, two countries on the US State Department’s list of sponsors of state terrorism.

European officials blame Mr Rumsfeld’s acerbic goading and confrontational style for deepening splits between Washington, Paris and Berlin that could have been resolved without either side losing face.

At the critical diplomatic juncture over Iraq in recent weeks, Mr Rumsfeld angered France and Germany by dismissing them as “old Europe”.

“He’s deepened suspicions overseas and made it much harder to get people on side,” one diplomat said.

Mr Bush, intensely loyal to everyone on his team, has given no public indication that he intends to rein in Mr Rumsfeld. The veteran politician, 70, who is the youngest and oldest man to serve as US Defence Secretary, is very much his “own man”, and won cult status for his daily televised briefings during the Afghanistan war.

The White House is clearly concerned at the divisions that its pursuit of Saddam Hussein has exposed between the US and some of its oldest allies in Europe. When Mr Bush and Señor Aznar met last weekend, Mr Bush asked for ideas about how the US could heal the strained relations.

Mr Blair was due to arrive in Madrid last night for a working dinner with Señor Aznar before a joint press conference this morning.

US diplomat quits

A US diplomat who has served abroad for more than 20 years has quit in protest at President Bush’s “fervent pursuit of war with Iraq”. John Brady Kiesling, 45, political officer in Athens, faxed his resignation to Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, saying that the US policy on Iraq “is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offence and defense since Woodrow Wilson”.

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