Pretzels were off the menu at US President George W. Bush's working lunch with European statesmen in Ireland yesterday afternoon.
Only the finest Irish food was to grace the table at the renaissance castle in County Clare, in the west of the country, as the conversation turned to Iraq and famine in Sudan. French fries were unlikely to be served and there would be nothing the US president might have trouble pronouncing.
What Bush was probably choking on was the gristle of the Irish media.
PHOTO: AP
Not suspecting that he would be subjected to anything more than a gentle probing from a reporter from a friendly state that the US "helped" to prosper, on Friday he gave the first White House interview to an Irish journalist for 20 years.
But the state broadcaster RTE subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming and had media commentators and license-payers debating the Irish style of journalism.
It was intended as a cordial start to yesterday's EU-US summit in Ireland, which sought to patch up a relationship troubled by Iraq before he headed to the NATO summit in Turkey yesterday afternoon.
Some claimed that Bush's first visit to the Irish Republic had been tailored to give him a pre-election media opportunity to impress the 50 million or so Irish folk back home, and Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern's fashion sense would ensure that he got the coverage he requires.
Once known as anorak-man, Ahern hogged so much media time with his recent appearance in a garish pair of canary-yellow trousers at the G8 summit that the issue was raised in the Irish parliament.
But RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman, was not about to let Bush off the hook. In an interview broadcast on television and radio breakfast shows she persisted with questions about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place and about being disliked.
"I don't really try to chase popularity polls," the president said.
After Irish churchmen queried the president's morals this week, there was also an inevitable question about his devotion to the Lord.
"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]," he said.
"That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, `Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own,'" he said.
The thousands of Stop Bush protesters at Shannon airport, where Bush was due to land Friday night, were not swayed.
A warehouse on Shannon's industrial estate had been converted into a makeshift courthouse with holding cells for up to 150 people and a judge was on standby.
Irish demonstrators were resolute. "No red carpet for killer Bush," said a placard in a hedgerow.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS