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Unhappy Birthday
You have to hand it to Jacques Chirac. He's approaching to the end of his presidency, France remains locked in the low-level economic and social crisis that is largely his fault - yet he still finds time for one last snub to his arch-rival Tony Blair.
This time, Chirac's people leaked that the British PM had not been invited to Chirac's 74th birthday party, due to be held in Riga, Latvia tonight. Most western leaders are in the city for the NATO summit, but Chirac was eager to upstage both Blair, George W Bush and Latvia's government by holding his own mini-summit - with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Blair was off the invitation list, but the French crowed that Putin was due to make his first visit to the Baltic state for 15 years just to pay tribute to Oncle Jacques.
What an unusual, but entirely characteristic invitation. The Americans complained that Chirac was "typically" trying to upstage other NATO leaders. Bush had made clear that Georgia and Ukraine would be welcomed into NATO in future: Putin would aggressively oppose such a step (Moscow remains locked in a mini "Cold War" with pro-western leaders in Georgia). Moreover, the Brits would raise an eyebrow at Chirac's extending a welcome to a man who has been loudly accused of being involved in the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko - not to mention the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Chirac was doomed to be disappointed, however: Moscow pulled the rug from his scheme, with a statement regretting that due to logistical difficulties, Putin would be unable to make the birthday bash.
The president, it seems, will have to console himself with snubbing Blair again. London's sang-froid response, though, is sure to annoy Chirac, who is said to resent his rival's youth: "Birthdays tend to be private matters. As you get older they get even more private", a Downing Street official told the Daily Mail, rather archly.
Last word, though, has to go to one of the Mail's readers. On the comments section of the notoriously anti-Blair paper, one reader writes:
"Well, the French like their food. Blair would put off a vulture feeding."
