For anyone who has ever wondered what US President George W. Bush sounds like when the microphones are off, the answer, at least at lunchtime on Monday, was blunt to the point of profane, laced with a wiseguy edge and, like anyone forced to make small talk, willing to fall back on safe topics like air travel.
Bush was munching on a roll during lunch with his fellow world leaders on the final day of the G8 summit meeting here as his unguarded comments were picked up by an open microphone and overheard by gleeful journalists.
Whether the cause was poor staff work by the Russian hosts or something more calculated, the result was more interesting and revealing than the catalog of official statements the leaders had issued during their talks here in this St Petersburg suburb, at the Konstantinovsky Palace.
Using a vulgarity, Bush said at one point that Syria should get Hezbollah to stop its attacks on Israel, describing US policy in the kind of unfettered language that he acknowledged only weeks ago sometimes gets him in trouble when he uses it publicly.
Discussing diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Bush said the approach favored by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan "seems odd." Referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Bush said he "felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad, make something happen."
The microphone caught him discussing global trade talks, his impatience with long speeches, even his preference for Diet Coke. For four minutes, the world was given an unscripted look at how he does business with his international counterparts, especially British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, apparently alert to the peril, brought the episode to a conclusion by turning the microphone off.
But not before Bush disclosed that he would send US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East and needled Blair about a recent birthday gift.
"No, I'm just going to make it up," Bush said in one aside, presumably to an aide, apparently referring to remarks he would be making to the other leaders. "I'm not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long."
Rice was subject to a similar unwitting public airing of her views last month in Moscow, when someone forgot to turn off a microphone while she was having lunch with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Bush's unscripted side has been put on public display before, as when his unflattering description of a reporter for the New York Times was picked up by a microphone at a campaign event in 2000.
RSS