Prince Charles threatens legal action over China memo

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Prince Charles threatens legal action over China memo

, r% u5 C& n$ `  c4 uStephen Bates
: q( Q9 }- ^$ s$ J- e! Y( S+ rMonday November 14, 2005
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( _/ a1 v5 o! m) LGuardian

4 ?4 F) \4 p# E* k* G' cClarence House officials yesterday threatened to take legal action against a Sunday newspaper for printing an eight-year-old memo by Prince Charles in which he apparently described China's Communist leaders as "appalling old waxworks" and criticised the coterie of advisers surrounding Tony Blair as inexperienced.
# v& m  R4 ^" s1 `* H9 `The prince's spokeswoman accused the Mail on Sunday of making use of unlawfully copied documents. There was no suggestion that they were inauthentic.
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! @7 n& [9 x' Y. Q4 \The prince's memorandum was apparently hand-written following his presence in June 1997 at the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese authorities at which he represented the Queen.

( D9 ^# N# e$ y( i( }8 ~, aEntitled "The Handover of Hong Kong or the Great Chinese Takeaway", it derides the "ridiculous rigmarole" and "awful Soviet-style display" of goose-stepping Chinese soldiers during the ceremony and mocks the Chinese leaders who took part.

He wrote: "After my speech the president detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern."
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But the prince also took the opportunity to rail against the then newly elected Blair government's decision to axe the royal yacht Britannia. "If only [the prime minister] could have seen the yacht with the receptions and dinners under way and heard people's reactions ... but they are all in such a hurry, so never really learn about anything."
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" `2 C1 n; B# b$ v. N0 FThe newspaper's pretext for publishing the remarks now was last week's state visit by the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. Prince Charles, who boycotted the last official state visit in 1999 because of the Chinese authorities' behaviour in Tibet, was also absent from last week's state banquet because he and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, were flying back from the US.
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A Clarence House spokeswoman said: "It is quite clear to us that the source for this story is material that was unlawfully accessed and copied and then handed to the Mail on Sunday [which] had full knowledge of these facts, yet still chose to use the material as the basis for their story."
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/ S5 g+ ^; M) |+ w0 NA spokesman for the paper said: "Copies of the prince's journal were circulated to a wide range of people. As far as [we] are concerned this has been a classic journalistic exercise and we came into possession of the text entirely legitimately."
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+ F! e/ l# C6 b1 qGuardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

文宇

查尔斯太愚蠢了，威胁中国会是他犯下的极大的错误.