LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson Wednesday after details emerged of the diplomat\u2019s friendship with disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Mandelson called the late Epstein his \u201cbest pal\u201d and an \u201cintelligent, sharp-witted man\u201d in a 2003 letter, released to the public just a week before US President Donald Trump was due to pay a state visit to Britain.<\/p>\n
Challenged in parliament about his judgment in appointing the 71-year-old grandee of the center-left Labour party to the key diplomatic post, Starmer insisted that \u201cdue process was followed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described Epstein as a \u201cdespicable criminal\u201d who \u201cdestroyed the lives of so many women and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cThe ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He is right to do so. I have confidence in him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter was one of many included in a book compiled to mark the now notorious financier\u2019s 50th birthday.<\/p>\n
The contents were published by a US congressional panel investigating Epstein\u2019s sex crimes case.<\/p>\n
Mandelson, an influential former Labour minister and spin doctor, said it was \u201cvery embarrassing\u201d to see the letter published, in comments to The Sun daily\u2019s \u201cHarry Cole Saves the West\u201d YouTube channel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI regret very, very deeply indeed carrying on that association with him for far longer than I should have done,\u201d the ambassador said.<\/p>\n
He said he had never witnessed any criminal behavior, but added he also felt a deep sense of sympathy for the women \u201cwho suffered as a result of (Epstein\u2019s) behavior and his illegal criminal activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandelson conceded that further embarrassing correspondence between himself and Epstein will come out, meaning Starmer will likely face further tricky questions about the appointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no doubt at all that there\u2019s a lot of traffic, correspondence exchanges between us, absolutely. And we know those are going to surface,\u201d said Mandelson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know they\u2019re going to be very embarrassing, and they know that I\u2019m going to profoundly regret ever having met him and been introduced to him in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those revelations trickled in on Wednesday, as The Sun and other media reported that Mandelson sent Epstein supportive emails as he faced prosecution in a Florida case for soliciting a minor.<\/p>\n
Just before Epstein entered a plea deal in 2008 for the case, Mandelson allegedly wrote to Epstein that \u201cI think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened\u201d and urging him to \u201cfight for early release.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour friends stay with you and love you,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Mandelson, dubbed the \u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d during his years as a political spinner, was twice forced to resign from Tony Blair\u2019s Labour government in the late 1990s and early 2000s over allegations of misconduct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson Wednesday after details emerged of the diplomat\u2019s friendship with disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson called the late Epstein his \u201cbest pal\u201d and an \u201cintelligent, sharp-witted man\u201d in a 2003 letter, released to the public just a week before US President …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86644,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86633\/revisions\/86644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}