US diplomat drops F-bomb, irks EU

Washington’s new top diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland reportedly said “F*** the EU” during a conversation with US ambassador to Kiev; apologises for the comment which has already been uploaded onto YouTube

Kiev: The US tried to contain fallout on Friday from a leaked phone conversation where a top diplomat uses the F-word regarding the EU's handling of the Ukraine crisis.

The embarrassing diplomatic incident comes as Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich was due to hold crisis talks with Russian counterpart and ally Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Washington and Brussels have engaged in a diplomatic stand-off with Kiev and Moscow over mass protests that erupted in Ukraine in November when Yanukovich rejected a pact with the EU in favour of closer ties with former Soviet master Russia.

But the leaked phone call appears to reveal US frustration with the Europena Union over the handling of the long-running crisis. Washington's new top diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, apologized on Thursday for her comments. "F*** the EU," Nuland said in what appeared to be a recent phone call with US ambassador to Kiev, Geoff Pyatt, which was somehow intercepted and then uploaded onto YouTube.

The conversation uploaded on the site was accompanied by Russian captions.

The US state department was left fuming after the leak, pointing the finger at Russia for allegedly bugging the phones of the diplomats. "Certainly we think this is a new low in Russian tradecraft," said spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who did not, however, dispute the authenticity of the call.

Western officials described the leaks as a throwback to the cloak-and-dagger tactics of the Cold War, apparently aimed as much at sowing discord among Western allies as at discrediting the opposition in Ukraine.

In the recording, which went viral after being re-posted by an aide to Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, Nuland and Pyatt discuss frankly which opposition figures should go into the making of the new government in Ukraine.

 

Source: msn