Forget “read my lips.” When doing business with Madeleine Albright, former US ambassador to the UN and former US president Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, you’re better off with “read my brooch.”
In her new book, just published in the US, Albright reveals that the brooch she chose to wear on her left lapel was determined by the state of play in ongoing diplomatic negotiations. So while Palestinian president Yasser Arafat was treated to a wasp, South Korean president Kim Dae-jung got a more welcoming sun.
The fad kicked off after the Gulf War in 1994 when the Iraqi press referred to her as an “unparalleled serpent” and she decided to wear a coiled snake to her next meeting with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
PHOTO: AFP
Meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in 2000, the message was unashamed jingoism: “I wore the boldest American flag I had.”
Albright kept some of her best brooches for the Russians. When she met Russian foreign secretary Igor Ivanov in 2000, she wore a bug, to let the Russians know the US knew they were being bugged.
By the time she left office, she had a collection of more than 300 brooches — most of them picked up for next to nothing at flea markets, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, presumably for meetings with the Taliban, and a gold UFO with three aliens.
Sadly the world never got to find out what she would choose for a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — a dead man walking? However, her brooch idea has already broached the British Labour stronghold. When Hazel Blears resigned from the Cabinet in June, she wore a sinking ship — with the message, “Rocking the boat.”
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