MEP calls EU to account over Putin’s unkindest cut

Date: 05/12/02

THE shock waves from Vladimir Putin's politically incorrect remarks about circumcision at the 11 November EU-Russia summit continue to be felt.

Radical MEP Olivier Dupuis has launched a fresh broadside against the EU team behind the summit for allowing the Russian president to have his own interpreters at its press conference. Putin's apparatchiks didn't actually translate his response to a French journalist's question about Chechnya. (The journalist was told that if he wanted to become a Muslim radical, he could travel to Moscow for a circumcision and would be guaranteed that 'nothing grows back'.)

Dupuis has now tabled a parliamentary question asking why the 'sacrosanct and healthy rule' that the host country or institution provides translation for a visiting leader was breached.