Mandela memorial may cause diplomatic difficulties for world leaders

As with the squabbling progeny of a dearly departed great-uncle, some of the powerful guests at Nelson Mandela’s memorial today will have to be deftly handled in the seating plan to avoid awkward moments.

Many leaders claim spiritual kinship with Mr Mandela’s message of reconciliation, but not all are quite ready to put it into practice across the board, at least not in the glare of the floodlights at Soweto’s Soccer City, the venue for a mass ceremony honouring the hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, in which more than 70 world leaders are expected to take part.

Keeping distance
The White House will require a fair deal of diplomatic space between US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Raúl Castro. Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff may still want to keep her distance from Mr Obama, because of continuing popular anger with Washington over NSA surveillance.

Mr Obama, Mr Castro and Ms Rousseff, however, find themselves on the same bill in the handful of foreign leaders scheduled to speak at the event, along with leaders from China, India and Namibia.

Downing Street will seek to keep Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe away from British prime minister David Cameron in the cramped VIP area of the stadium.

The prospect of a far more geopolitically charged chance encounter has receded, however, with the news that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and president Shimon Peres will not attend.

Nor, it seems, will Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who said he was dispatching his vice-president for administrative affairs, Mohammad Shariatmadari.

Mr Rouhani was publicly warned yesterday not to take part by hardline conservative newspaper Keyhan, which declared it was a trap to compromise him with unwanted handshakes with "the head of the Great Satan government".

Mr Netanyahu cancelled his announced visit to South Africa just hours before he was due to leave Israel, citing the high cost of travel and security logistics.

The decision followed criticism in the past year of the Netanyahu family’s use of taxpayers’ money on scented candles, ice cream and the installation of a double bed on an aircraft carrying the prime minister and his wife to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. But there was speculation that concerns about anti-Israel opinion in South Africa could have contributed to the move.

Mr Peres decided not to attend after doctors advised him against a long-haul flight in the aftermath of a bout of flu.

It is not clear what representation is being sent from Damascus, but any government official would be seen as politically toxic for many of the dignitaries attending.

The other side of the coin of such an all-embracing guest-list is that it could provide both the occasion and the cover for bold but secret diplomacy. "It is an ideal place to do business," said a British official. – (Guardian service)