Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s infamous no-show at Shannon Airport was a big news story in 1994 and newly released archive files shed much new light on the background to the incident.
Taoiseach Albert Reynolds had cut short his visit to Australia to be present on the tarmac when the presidential plane carrying Mr Yeltsin was scheduled to arrive on September 30th from a conference in Seattle.
Two government ministers, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen, and a junior minister, Willie O’Dea, were also in attendance along with many officials and an Army band.
Mr Yeltsin’s plane circled Shannon Airport for an hour before touching down, but Mr Yeltsin never got off the plane and Mr Reynolds’s offer to go to speak to him on board was refused.
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The Russian ambassador to Ireland, Nikolai Kozyrev, was “exquisitely embarrassed” by the failure of his president to leave the aircraft, according to Department of the Taoiseach files.
Certain ‘State papers’ or official archives are declassified at the end of every year. This week, thousands of documents in archives in Dublin, Belfast and London are being made public for the first time, bringing new insights into events of times past. This year’s Dublin archives mostly date from 1994.
The incident garnered worldwide headlines and many observers presumed that Mr Yeltsin was too drunk to leave the plane. He had already earned a reputation for drunkenness by grabbing a baton and directing an orchestra in Berlin earlier that year.
Mr Yeltsin’s reputation was such that the diplomatic head of protocol, Liam Canniffe, had made provision for the Russian president being “worse for wear”. Mr Canniffe instructed the Irish Army to dispense with military honours if they felt Mr Yeltsin wasn’t up to it.
Department of Taoiseach files reveal that Mr Canniffe and Mr Kozyrev boarded the aircraft but were refused entry at the top of the stairs by two men.
They told the ambassador and Mr Canniffe that Mr Yeltsin was “tired after his strenuous journey and was resting”.
A request that the taoiseach be allowed to board the plane was also turned down.
Instead, Mr Reynolds was offered a meeting with the deputy prime minister of Russia, Oleg Soskovets.
In his memo covering the events, Mr Canniffe noted that Mr Soskovets’s face appeared “gloomy”, but changed to a smile at the official’s request that he would meet the taoiseach.
The report also noted that when Mr Soskovets was asked by journalists about Mr Yeltsin’s failure to appear, he replied that the Russian president was “indisposed” after flying for 17 hours.
Mr Reynolds decided to accept the Russian explanation and told journalists on the tarmac at Shannon Airport. “I do not feel there has been any sort of snub. When a man is ill, a man is ill”.
Mr Canniffe recorded that the Russian deputy chief of protocol, Ilya Barakhvostov, had told him that they were “embarrassed by the turn of events” and would be asking the taoiseach to visit Moscow “to make up for what happened”.
The files also reveal that an Irish diplomat in Russia was at the airport in Moscow when Mr Yeltsin landed several hours later, when he initially appeared “loud and a little incoherent”.
The official said someone remarked to him at the time: “If he talked like that in Shannon, I’m not sure your prime minister would understand him”.
However, he said it became clear over the next 10 minutes that Mr Yeltsin was “quite sober”, albeit in a “somewhat excited mood.”
The diplomat said Mr Yeltsin, on arriving in Moscow, proclaimed in a loud voice that he had overslept at Shannon and “wanted to find out and punish whoever was responsible for not waking him”.
A contrite Mr Yeltsin wrote to Mr Reynolds four days later expressing “sincere regret that due to an unfortunate mishap our meeting at Shannon failed to take place”.
He then extended an invitation to Mr Reynolds to visit Russia in the first half of 1995. Mr Reynolds resigned as taoiseach in November 1994.
State Papers articles
- Bertie Ahern overruled objections to continue weapons purchases from Israel in 1990s
- Mary Robinson was blocked by Government from taking up UN role in 1993
- Russian ambassador ‘exquisitely embarrassed’ by Yeltsin’s no-show at Shannon Airport
- Jack Lynch puzzled by request to repatriate James Joyce’s remains
- Plans to name IRA Army Council ‘daft’, agreed Irish and British officials
- Dublin blindsided on Chris Patten’s appointment as head of NI policing commission, State records show
- Loyalist paramilitaries’ increased professionalisation in early 1990s concerned Dublin, State papers reveal
- More should have been done to protect assassinated lawyer Rosemary Nelson, British officials later accepted
- Family of Irishman assassinated on Bloody Sunday by Collins ‘Squad’ compensated by British
- Irish government feared retaliation over decision not to prosecute Dessie O’Hare
- Senior British general ‘furious’ about new Bloody Sunday inquiry he saw as ‘cynical political move’
- How John Bruton, the last Redmondite, got to grips with the IRA, the UK and the peace process
- Notorious apartheid police chief ‘Prime Evil’ was refused entry to Ireland over fears he would settle
[ Yeltsin makes a memorable visit to Ireland in 2006Opens in new window ]
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