Downing Street dismisses Chirac jibes

Downing Street tonight brushed aside a series of anti-British jibes by French President Jacques Chirac.

Mr Chirac amused Russian President Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at a weekend with some highly undiplomatic jokes about mad cow disease and terrible British food.

No 10 responded to the comments, reported in the Liberation newspaper in France, with icy disdain.

“There are some things better not commented on,” a spokeswoman said.

Mr Chirac’s apparently private comments during a break in a three-way summit meeting in Kaliningrad, Russia, were overheard by a number of journalists, according to the newspaper.

The French leader began with a taunt about the British and BSE, saying: “The only thing they’ve ever done for European agriculture is mad cow”.

He then turned to the subject of British cooking. “We can’t trust people who have such bad food,” he said. “After Finland, its the country with the worst food”.

He also suggested that France’s troubles with Nato began after its Scottish former Secretary General Lord Robertson offered him a local Scottish speciality - apparently a reference to haggis – to eat.

Mr Chirac’s spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said that he had not heard the exchanges and did want to comment.

However the apprently light-hearted remarks come at a time when Anglo-French relations are at rock bottom following a series of bruising clashes between Mr Chirac and Tony Blair over Europe and Britain’s budget rebate.

The two leaders are may brush shoulders at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Singapore where they are supporting the bids by their respective capital cities to host the 2012 Games.

And they will certainly meet more formally later in the week at the G8 summit in Gleneagles.

Mr Blair appeared to drop a pointed reference to Mr Chirac’s comments when he was asked whether the G8 summit would be an anticlimax after the drama of the IOC meeting.

“I won’t say the G8 summit would be an anticlimax to it because that would be undiplomatic and I know when I go there I will be in the presence of very diplomatic people,” he told reporters.