Monday, December 19, 2011

Top oops moments of 2011 - Part 1

S M Krishna reads out wrong speech to UN: This was embarrassment on a global scale. Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna read out a full three minutes of a speech at the United Nations Security Council meeting in February before realizing it was actually someone else's speech. It all started when Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado decided to speak extempore and a copy of his speech was handed to all foreign ministers present. When Mr Krishna rose to speak, he picked up the wrong paper by mistake and didn't not realize his error until corrected by India's envoy to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri.

Sarkozy-Obama are undiplomatic at G20: Reporters at November's G20 summit in Cannes didn't mean to overhear a private, and as it turned out, a very indiscreet conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama, but they could hardly help themselves when it was transmitted over a public system by mistake. What they heard was damning – for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Sarkozy called a liar. In reply, Obama complained about having to deal with him daily. Their remarks were translated into French and transmitted to the journalists present – who made a group decision not to report on what they heard. However, there was no keeping the conversation (and the diplomatic implications that will inevitably follow) under wraps as other news agencies picked up the story.

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