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Diplomatic snub? Say it in French
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Reuters) -- French may be losing out to English as the language of diplomacy, but it came in handy at a NATO summit on Friday to snub Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who has been accused of arms smuggling to Iraq. Kuchma turned up in Prague for the alliance's meeting despite blunt warnings to stay away. He even attended a gala evening whose guests included U.S. President George W. Bush. But by using the French names for the 46 nations in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) -- and arranging them alphabetically -- the leader of Ukraine was kept apart from the leaders of the "United Kingdom" and "United States" on Friday. Kuchma found himself next to the president of Turkey, seven seats away from British Prime Minister Tony Blair of "Royaume-Uni" and more than 30 away from Bush of "Etats-Unis." "This is the first time I've seen a meeting like this arranged alphabetically in French," a NATO official said, although French is one of the alliance's two official languages. "It's a very neat trick: the point is that he's not sitting next to the United Kingdom and the United States," said another. "We didn't want to make a big scene and appear undignified, but we wanted him to know what we think." NATO had told Kuchma he would not be welcome at the meeting after Washington said it believed he had approved the sale of a Kolchuga early warning radar system to Iraq on the basis of taped conversations it said were authentic. Kuchma has repeatedly denied the charges. The 19-nation defence alliance downgraded separate talks with Ukraine in Prague from head of state to foreign minister level, but could not prevent Kuchma attending the EAPC.
"The president of Ukraine knows...there is a shadow over him in connection with the export, or possible export, of a Kolchuga radar to Iraq," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said on Thursday. "That shadow remains because questions have still not been answered." Diplomats said that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was the only NATO ally to argue against making a pariah of the Ukrainian leader, was on Kuchma's table at Thursday's dinner in Prague castle. But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was seen chatting amicably with Kuchma at one point in the evening. Czech authorities denied a visa to Alexander Lukashenko, the increasingly isolated president of Belarus, another EAPC member, because of alleged human rights abuses in the ex-Soviet state. Belarus has vowed to cut ties with Prague over the snub. NATO's estrangement with its two eastern neighbours cast a shadow over the summit at which seven countries which once stood behind the Iron Curtain were invited to join the alliance.
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