Rule No 1: Never say yes to a gift horse
WHEN organising visits for the Prince of Wales, the Foreign Office’s Royal Visits Committee knows to expect a certain amount of haggling. Like the Queen, Prince Charles must follow ministerial advice. But he still enjoys some leeway in arranging the itinerary.
There was certainly some bartering in 1996 when the Government despatched the Prince on a tour of Central Asian outposts of the old Soviet Union.
Though some of his hosts had a deeply suspect record on human rights, there were important commercial opportunities for British companies in this newly emerging market.
The Prince’s staff proposed a schedule that seemed closely aligned to the old Silk Road between China and the West.
‘I suspect it was his own determination to see Samarkand,’ says the Foreign Secretary of that time, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, with a knowing smile. Sure enough, the ancient Uzbek cities of Samarkand and Bukhara featured prominently on the final itinerary.
Perhaps the most challenging leg was in Turkmenistan, where the Prince spent the evening at the pink palace of the country’s horse-obsessed dictator, President Saparmurat Niyazov.
As well as banning dogs and pop music, he was in the habit of presenting visiting dignitaries with horses, a serious problem for the recipients.
The Foreign Office had been left
to sort out the mess when, during a stopover in 1993, John Major was given a horse called Maksat.
Eventually, it was brought to Britain, at great expense, but proved wholly unfit for official duties.
Although Maksat finally ended up living happily on a Welsh farm, the Foreign Office had one clear instruction for the Prince’s officials: no more horses.
This made for a tense evening as Niyazov led the Prince down to a vast equestrian arena, where an energetic display of Turkmeni horsemanship was laid on for his benefit. As the two men walked through the stables, Niyazov sang the praises of one horse after another.
It looked increasingly likely that the Prince was about to be offered one at any minute. Yet the royal guest managed to dodge every presidential blandishment.
Craftily observing how impressed he was that the President could manage so many horses, when he himself had too many to look after and frequently rubbing the ‘bad back’ which made riding painful these days, he managed to leave Niyazov’s pink palace at the end of a 22-course banquet with nothing more awkward than a pom-pom hat and a carpet.