Americans in Kuwait defend envoy

The US ambassador created a furore when she compared male Kuwaiti MPs to dogs, but she has the backing of her expatriate countrymen.

US ambassador Deborah Jones intended her comments as humorous.

KUWAIT CITY // A speech by the US ambassador in which she jokingly compared Kuwaiti male MPs to dogs may have caused a furore among parliamentarians here, but yesterday she appeared to receive the support of US expatriates in a country that enjoys closer political ties with Washington than most in the region. Deborah Jones, who has been in the post since April 2008, committed the faux pas during a briefing to the Middle East Institute in Washington last month, which was supposed to focus on the strategic relationship between the two countries.

While the comment has led to one call for her to be expelled, for some of the thousands of expatriates living and working in Kuwait the response has been seen as an over reaction. "I am certain that ambassador Jones's comments on cats and dogs were of a humorous nature and were in no way meant to insult male members of Kuwait's parliament," said Meghan McCabe, a business development and marketing manager who has lived in Kuwait for 13 years. "It is unfortunate that some people - and this could apply not only to Kuwait, but anywhere in the world - are threatened by a strong, intelligent woman and seek any opportunity to create difficulties for her.

"She has brought a much needed perspective to her office and there have been noticeable positive changes at the embassy." In Ms Jones's speech, she said her Kuwaiti colleagues referred to Kuwait's first female MPs as the four cats and asked "does that mean the remainder are dogs in the parliament? I don't know what else unifies them but their chromosomal make up." Some members of the audience laughed at her remark.

One US engineer living in Kuwait, who gave his name as Joel, said she called the MPs dogs in a playful way. "To me it didn't mean disrespect," he said. "[It's] Nothing to go crazy about, let's pay more attention to upgrading sewage treatment plants," he added, referring to a sewage station that broke down last month causing an environmental disaster. Another US citizen who asked not to be named, said the ambassador could have been more careful. "I know they take that term quite badly here, it's sensitive," she said. "When you make a reference to dogs here it's quite harsh, quite strong in this part of the world. I wouldn't even call my husband that."

The Islamist MP Mohammed al Hayef has called for the ambassador to be expelled from the country and other MPs have asked the ministry of foreign affairs to clarify its stance. But the speaker of parliament, Jassem al Kharafi, supported the US envoy on Sunday and said her comments have been "misrepresented". Aside from comments about the country's MPs, Ms Jones, who has 27 years of experience in the US state department, used the speech to give her take on the problems faced by Kuwait's national assembly in recent years after rows between the government and MPs led to parliamentary dissolutions and resignations of the cabinet. And she talked about the country in general, saying that in the last 30 years Kuwait's demographics have changed from "being very much a club of the merchant class", whose families have "typically one spouse, two or three children". Now, many Bedouins with much larger families have settled and they are "demanding their share of the pie," she said.

The relationship between the western superpower and the Gulf state dates from around 1987, when the US flagged Kuwaiti tankers with US markings to ensure their free passage through the Gulf. Kuwait is now a logistics base for US forces in Iraq and around 15,000 American troops are based here. But relations suffered a blow last year when the government's $17bn (Dh62bn) deal with Dow Chemical collapsed after opposition from the parliament in the wake of the international financial crisis.

Ms Jones said she was "extremely disappointed" because the deal included establishing a research and development centre in Kuwait. [e-mail]