A GLITTERING lunch for the world’s sovereigns to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was marked yesterday by a withdrawal, protests and sharp criticism of the guest list.

Spain’s Queen Sophia has pulled out of the event slated for Windsor Castle, west of London, amid tension over Gibraltar, while there were protests over the reported attendance of Swaziland’s King Mswati III.

Bahrain officials also said King Hamad, whose Gulf island country is in a state of civil unrest following a deadly crackdown on protests, should be attending, angering rights groups.

Buckingham Palace will not unveil the guest list before today and is not commenting on the lunch, being held to mark Queen Elizabeth’s 60 years on the British throne.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “The sovereigns lunch is a matter for Buckingham Palace, but we understand all reigning sovereigns have been invited.

“The jubilee celebrations are about marking 60 years of the queen’s reign, they are not a political event.

“The palace is not releasing further details, including details of the guests list, until the day of the engagement.”

Queen Sofia, the consort of King Juan Carlos, cancelled her trip due to tensions with Britain over the tiny Gibraltar peninsula, which Spain ceded to Britain in perpetuity in 1713.

Last week, Madrid protested to London over a planned June 11-13 jubilee visit to Gibraltar on behalf of Queen Elizabeth by her youngest son, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex.

“The government considers it is hardly adequate that in the current circumstances, Queen Sofia take part in Queen Elizabeth’s jubilee,” a spokesman for the Spanish royal household said Wednesday.

The Spanish king and queen were due to attend the Windsor lunch, but King Juan Carlos had already pulled out, recovering from hip replacement surgery after a fall during an elephant hunting expedition in Africa.

After the lunch, Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are hosting a dinner for the foreign sovereign monarchs at Buckingham Palace in London.

Not all the sovereigns are attending both events.

Japan’s Emperor Akihito – who attended Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 – and Empress Michiko are going. They visited the Kyoto Garden in London’s Holland Park yesterday.

On Wednesday, a group of Swazis living in Britain protested outside London’s luxurious Savoy Hotel, where King Mswati was said to be staying with an entourage of more than 30 people.

Swaziland Vigil co-ordinator Thobile Gwebu said that in contrast, Swazis had been reduced to eating cow dung.

Meanwhile, former Europe minister Denis MacShane blasted the Foreign Office – thought to have assisted on logistical matters – for not stopping King Hamad’s invite.

The Bahraini regime “has done such terrible things to its own people since the Arab awakening a year ago”, he said.

“For too long we have turned a blind eye to the repression carried out under the rule of royals in Arabia.”

He said the monarchs of Brunei, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and the United Arab Emirates all “preside over regimes that abuse human rights”.

Queen Elizabeth, 86, and her husband Prince Philip, 90, visited northwest England on  yesterday as part of their jubilee tour of Britain. They took a trip round the Albert Dock in Liverpool in an amphibious “Yellow Duckmarine”.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on May 18 2012. Filed under Africa & World Politics, Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry