Queen Elizabeth II: Chinese officials 'were very rude'

 

  The Queen was caught on camera making an unguarded comment about the Chinese government during a garden party at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. Queen Elizabeth said a Chinese delegation had been 'very rude' to the British ambassador to China. (May 11) AP

LONDON — Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was caught on camera describing Chinese officials as “very rude” to the British ambassador.
The monarch made the comments to a police official at an event at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to.....

 mark her recent 90th birthday.
In the footage, recorded by the palace’s cameraman and made available Wednesday, Scotland Yard Commander Lucy D’Orsi told the queen that being a commander for a state visit by Chinese President Xi in October was a “quite a testing time.”
Introducing D’Orsi to the monarch, an official said D’Orsi was seriously undermined by the Chinese, but managed to hold her own and remain in command.

“They were very rude to the ambassador,” the queen said, to which D'Orsi agreed. The remark is highly unusual as queen usually steers clear of politics in public. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that Xi made a “very successful visit” to Britain.
It was the second embarrassing incident from the palace event to come to public attention, after Prime Minister David Cameron was filmed telling the queen that Nigeria and Afghanistan were "fantastically corrupt."

He was speaking ahead of an anti-corruption summit he will host in London Thursday that will be attended by leaders and dignitaries including Secretary of State John Kerry.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari — who pledged to fight corruption ahead of his election last year — delivered the keynote speech Wednesday at a separate anti-corruption conference in London hosted by the Commonwealth, an association of 53 countries.
"We've got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain... Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world," Cameron said in the comments to the queen caught on camera.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — the leader of the Anglican Church — interjected: "But this particular president is actually not corrupt... he's trying very hard.”
VIDEO:
CAMERON CALLS NIGERIA MOST CORRUPT NATION

Garba Shehu, a spokesperson for Buhari, said in a statement that Cameron's comments were "embarrassing to us...given the good work that the president is doing. The eyes of the world are on what is happening here."
"The prime minister must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria. Things are changing with corruption and everything else,” he added.

A senior Afghan official said Cameron’s remarks were unfair, the BBC reported.