President does what mama says

IT WAS the type of foot-in-mouth mistake that politicians seem so fond of making.

Yet in the volatile world of South American diplomacy, calling the government of your powerful, larger, neighbour "a bunch of thieves from top to bottom" could have had far-reaching consequences.

Fortunately, Jorge Batlle, the president of Uruguay and a man who does not mince his words, had some good advice from his mother, an Argentine.

She told him to say sorry for being so rude, possibly preventing a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

Believing he was speaking off the record, Mr Batlle told the US Bloomberg news agency of his blunt views on Argentina, which is virtually bankrupt after a devastating four-year recession. "The Argentine situation is an Argentine problem: a bunch of thieves from top to bottom," he said

Mr Batlle claimed his Argentine counterpart, Eduardo Duhalde, was incapable of saving the nation from crisis. Mr Duhalde is trying to pull Argentina out of a recession that has left half of Argentina’s 37 million people impoverished and 18 per cent jobless. Argentina has defaulted on its $141 billion foreign debt and devalued its currency.

Mr Batlle said he had grown weary of trying to offer solutions to Mr Duhalde on ways out of the crisis. "With Duhalde I can’t propose anything," he said. "He doesn’t have political strength, he doesn’t have backing and he doesn’t know where he is headed."

However, after the earful from his mother, Mr Batlle went to Buenos Aires on Tuesday night to make a grovelling apology to Mr Duhalde.

"Just imagine what this has been like for me. It’s been an absolute, utter Calvary," a tearful Mr Batlle told Mr Duhalde on live television at the presidential residence in the Buenos Aires suburb of Olivos.

Dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief, he said: "My mother was the first to call me to tell me that I’d made a huge mistake to have let my rage and passion jump out during conversation.

"It isn’t difficult for me to ask the Argentine people or you for forgiveness," Mr Batlle told Mr Duhalde. "It’s not difficult at all. It’s what a man of honour should do, and I do it with the passion I feel for our countries, to which I am linked by history and by family."

Mr Batlle, whose first wife was Argentine, and whose children have spent much of their lives in Argentina, blamed his outburst on probing questions by journalists and on the stress caused by Uruguay’s own five-month economic crisis, which has seen his popularity ratings plunge.

He said he intended his critical comments to be private and that they came at the end of the interview, which focused on Uruguay’s economic troubles.

A grim-faced Mr Duhalde said he appreciated Mr Batlle’s "honourable gesture in visiting Buenos Aires after making a mistake that has mortified the Argentine people".

It is not the first time that Mr Batlle has made a political gaffe by spouting disparaging remarks about other countries. In 1998, he said he would attract leading Russian scientists to Uruguay. When asked how he intended to do this, he said it would be easy to import "that lot with no job, you know, the dead-hungry lot".

In April he took on Cuba’s Fidel Castro, sponsoring a UN resolution condemning Cuba for human rights violations. Mr Castro hit back with a tirade against "this hung-over, abject Judas who presides over Uruguay, this lackey of the United States..."

Bristling with rage, Mr Battle cut ties with Havana the next day. "The rupture will remain until it is clear that the Cuban people have peace and liberty," he said. However, he later backed down, saying Uruguay remained against the four decade-long US trade embargo on the communist country and would maintain relations with Havana at consular level.

Mr Batlle is in good company in criticising Argentina. Last year, Paul O’Neill, the US treasury secretary, said of Argentina’s crisis: "Nobody forced them to be the way they are." Ironically, as was the case with Mr O’Neill, Mr Batlle won some friends with his gaffe in Buenos Aires. Argentines refer to their politicians as politiqueros (politickers) and some said Mr Batlle had merely expressed what most Argentines openly acknowledged.

"Batlle said a great truth. I can’t understand why he apologised," said one Buenos Aires businessman.

Felipe Sol, the governor of Buenos Aires, said it was "terrible that most opinion polls show there’s agreement with a foreign president who has said something so preposterous about all Argentines".

But Mr Sol should not have been so surprised. Graffiti in Buenos Aires describes Argentine legislators as "the best that money can buy". Legislators have been spat at in Buenos Aires cafs and former presidents have been punched in the street. On a recent regional flight, senator Eduardo Menem, brother of the former president Carlos Menem, came to blows with a fellow passenger who had complained about the "stink of s***" on board the flight - a jibe aimed at Mr Menem.

If nothing else, Mr Batlle’s remarks served to amuse an Argentine populace sickened by corruption and government ineptitude.

Che, Argentines are Anglophiles?

ARGENTINA

Population: 37,300,000

Capital: Buenos Aires

Little known fact: Argentines are anglophiles, despite the fact that, as a Spanish colony, the country fought off two British invasions, in 1806 and 1807. This inspired locals to take on colonial power Spain in 1810, declaring independence in 1816.

Quirky customs: Argentines like to sip their tea - mate - from a gourd and use the Indian word "che" to start a conversation or attract someone’s attention, as in "che, can you spare a peso?"

Annoying habits: Beating England at football; referring to Uruguay as a province.

Military ally? Adis to all that

URUGUAY

Population: 3,300,000

Capital: Montevideo.

Little-known fact: Was rescued by Argentine forces after being invaded by its huge northern neighbour Brazil in the mid 19th century.

Quirky customs: Like Argentines, Uruguayans drink their mate from a gourd. They also enjoy their pizza with a tomato sauce, but no cheese.

Annoying habits: Uruguayans say adis (goodbye) when they mean hola (hello). With a population smaller than Scotland, it has won two World Cups, beating its bigger neighbours Argentina and Brazil in the 1930 and 1950 finals respectively.

Diplomatic gaffes a proud tradition

URUGUAY’S president was merely following a proud tradition of diplomatic gaffes when he offended Argentina.

Last summer, Henry McLeish, the then Scottish First Minister, also committed an embarrassing off-air radio blunder when he described John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary, as "a patronising bastard".

When he was US president, Ronald Reagan was once unaware that the microphone was already on and joked: "My fellow Americans, I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

US president George Bush mispronounced the Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar’s name as well as repeatedly calling him Spain’s president, all within hours of touching down in Madrid last month.

His father, former US president George Bush, was famously sick over the Japanese prime minister at a state banquet in his honour in Tokyo and, as president, Jimmy Carter kept up the good American diplomatic work in a speech in Poland in 1977 when he explained, quite sincerely that, "I want to know the Polish people." Unfortunately, the word "know" was mistranslated, and Carter found himself telling his audience: "I want to have carnal knowledge of the Polish people."

President Kennedy intended to win friends among his German hosts when he told them: "Ich bin ein Berliner." The literal translation was: "I am a jam doughnut."

During his time as US president, Richard Nixon failed to impress the French at the funeral of their president Charles de Gaulle when he said: "This is a great day for France."

Australian prime minister Paul Keating also caused a diplomatic storm when he put his arm around the Queen's waist in 1992.

Prince Philip, however, is the undisputed master of the gaffe.

Meeting a group of British students in China, he asked how long they had been in the country and then told them: "If you stay much longer, you’ll end up with slitty eyes."

For Russia, Boris Yeltsin, the then president, arrived in Ireland in 1994, allegedly having drunk so much vodka that he was incapable of getting off the plane.