British Prime Minister Tony Blair today brushed aside reports in the British media that some of the remarks made by parliamentary affairs minister Pramod Mahajan had caused him embarrassment. Blair quipped that he had become a connoisseur of Mahajan's speeches.
“Your speeches are full of wit and insight. I have become (a) connoisseur of your speeches,” Blair told Mahajan while inaugurating the India-UK Science Festival 2002 and the Knowledge and Learning Centre at the British Council here.
Blair's observation came close on the heels of British media reports that Mahajan's remarks in Bangalore had caused an “embarrassment” to the Prime Minister and a setback to his peace mission to the subcontinent.
Mahajan had told Blair at the CII meeting in Bangalore on Saturday that “people say you have come to cool us down. We have been cool enough for the last 50 years.”
Some British papers suggested that
Blair was “smarting from a public rebuke by (the) Indian Cabinet minister”
while others said Mahajan's remarks were a “foretaste” of the uphill task
ahead of Blair.