“This was not any sort of formal meeting. The British Prime Minister and I have not exactly been close,” says Ossur Skarphedinsson, who had a short meeting with Gordon Brown at last week’s NATO summit. The opportunity did not present itself to discuss the conclusions of the British parliamentary committee which has been investigating the collapse of the Icelandic banking sector.
“He was in a group with Nicolas Sarkozy and Steve Harper form Canada when we met. We only spoke for a short time, so it wasn’t possible to do much more than just greet each other. I wanted to have a better chat with him and David Miliband, the foreign minister, but the main meeting overran considerably because of behind the scenes lobbying over the election of the new NATO Secretary General. These men were more or less at the meeting just to clear up that issue. The schedule overran so much that it just was not possible to find free time to hold all the fringe meetings that had been organised,” Skarphedinsson told mbl.is.
What a non-story. Two leaders meet at another meeting to discuss NATO matters, they exchange greetings, and what do you lead on:- “meeting snubs UK-Iceland discussions”! One meeting over-ran and a number of secondary meetings got cancelled. There was no snub. Where’s the story?
That doesn’t sound like it was a snub…
“The schedule overran so much that it just was not possible to find free time to hold all the fringe meetings that had been organised,” Skarphedinsson told mbl.is.
If anyone understands the sentence above from Össur be sure to explain it to me. One would have thought it would have been easy given the schedule overran so long and it was only Turkey who needed to be lobbied to elect the former Danish Prime Minister to head NATO.
I’m also thinking how the forthcoming election will develop for the Social Democrates given Össur Skarphedinsson and Ingibörg Solrun are closely related.
Not to say conflicts of interest are unheard of with Iceland’s political elite. Are we not headed for a repeat of the IP’s party inner circle antics if they both govern together?
Hi,
The snub in question was provided by the long meeting itself (‘snub’ being used to mean ‘stub out or extinguish’)
I did not mean that the snub (deliberate rudeness) came from the British.
Does this help clarify, or would you like us to change the headline? Show of hands please! :-)
Regards
Alex, editor
Ah, I only knew the “deliberate rudeness” meaning of “snub”, but I suspect many are equally ignorant as me! :-)
The headline does not blame the Brits for any snub.
I don’t know how anyone could interpret that.
But who could be blamed for thinking that if there was a snub then it must have come from the British ::)
I wonder did Ossur forget to pass around the hat?
It will be fun to see what happens in the next few days. Will the Brits comment on the issue or not.
Here is a cool blog about this story.
http://icelandtalks.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/is-gordon-brown-avoiding-icelandic-ministers/