Blair accused of hyping up French row

The rift between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, the French President, widened yesterday when a French minister accused Mr Blair of hyping an argument to boost his standing with British voters.

Attempts by officials in London and Paris to control the dispute were scuppered when Herve Gaymard, the French Agriculture Minister, said Mr Blair had exaggerated the significance of his clash.

The French President showed his irritation at Mr Blair by postponing the annual meeting between ministers from the two countries. The snub was a response to reports in the British press yesterday of a stand-up row between the President and Prime Minister at the European Union summit in Brussels last Friday.

Mr Gaymard said: "I imagine that for the British public, which is always very touchy on questions linked to Europe, the British Prime Minister added a little [to reports of the argument] for his public opinion at home."

He also accused Britain of seeing the EU as "a free trade zone" and warned it would have to accept a reduction in the £2bn-a-year rebate on its EU contributions to allow the bloc to admit 10 new countries.

While allies denied Mr Gaymard had intended to fuel the row, officials in London were furious. "It is not a question of hyping anything," said Mr Blair's spokesman.

Only two hours after Downing Street said it hoped the Anglo-French get-together would go ahead, the French announced the postponement of the meeting planned for 3 December in Le Touquet.

The French Foreign Ministry said the meeting had been postponed because further preparatory work was needed – an explanation that surprised Downing Street. A new date has not been fixed.

The French suspect Mr Blair's aides leaked details of Friday's row in an attempt to mask his embarrassment at the agreement between France and Germany to maintain EU farm subsidies, struck before the Brussels summit.

Mr Blair's spokesman remarked pointedly that the days of "pre-cooked" EU summit deals were over. Asked if Britain had needed more time to prepare for the Anglo-French meeting, the spokesman replied bluntly: "Not from our perspective, no."

Number 10 insisted it was "relaxed and sanguine" at the postponement. Playing down the rift, Mr Blair's spokesman denied relations between the two governments had broken down. "The phone sockets are still connected; people are still talking to each other," he said.

But French officials said it would be "wrong to say that there was no connection" between the rescheduling of the summit and the spat between the two leaders on Friday.

The quarrel seems to have been a question of simmering personal resentments – over a series of issues, ranging from Iraq to the EU budget – bursting out into the open.

But officials in Paris, Brussels and London were at a loss to explain why such a routine European event as a Franco-British row over farm spending should spark an unseemly discourse between two experienced politicians.

"There is no particular problem between the British and French governments. We are getting on well over a series of issues. But there does seem to be a problem between our leaders," one official said.

In a separate disagreement, Britain vowed yesterday to block a proposal to rename the EU as the "United States of Europe", dismissing the idea as a non-runner.