Jacques Chirac, the French president, received a warmer welcome to his dinner with US counterpart George W. Bush in Brussels last month than organisers could have hoped for.

Host Tom Korologos, US ambassador to Belgium, told an American audience recently that Chirac was greeted by a bounding shitzu named Oatsie. The dog, belonging to the ambassador, was quickly led away only to reappear later under Chirac's chair. Korologos joked that he feared he would be sent back to Iraq, where he was recently a senior counsellor with the Coalition Provisional Authority, because of the pesky pooch.