‘Bill Clinton talks loudly, fails to act’: envoys’ barbed missives to John Major

confidential and sometimes unflattering appraisals of foreign leaders have been a staple of the diplomatic cable long before the leaking of the former US ambassador Kim Darroch’s emails.

Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, François Mitterrand and the Saudi royal family were all subjects of candid pen portraits and gossipy anecdotes during John Major’s premiership.

Major’s private secretary regaled how the Russian president was “v pissed off” after an aborted phone call to Clinton, the then US president.

Yeltsin’s health attracted much comment. Notes from the British embassy interpreter during Major’s 1994 Moscow visit described the Russian president, who had been confined to his dacha, as recovering from a chest cold and “twice coughed phlegm into his handkerchief” during his one-to-one with Major.

Yeltsin had lost weight, but was “still rather puffy around the neck and jaw”. He ate “selectively and moderately at the Kremlin dinner” and “also stayed off the vodka contenting himself with some large gulps of red wine,” according to the note. He seemed to have “lost his former bounce” and be “operating on a fairly flat battery”, and was equipped with “clutch cards” for reference during the meeting, which he “seemed to have memorised as his points came out in the same rehearsed order”.

Clinton did not escape the barbed embassy missives. One confidential briefing document from the British embassy in Washington reported that stories of Clinton’s personal life “have taken their toll” and the thought he might have to testify in court “gives the White House fits”.

“White House organisation remains chaotic”, the briefing added, with several departures expected “and the political team still trying to operate as if they were in a campaign”.

On Clinton and foreign policy, it stated: “The president enjoys thinking about, discussing and talking issues to death. He tries not to make up his mind until the last possible moment. It has proved much easier to get away with this in domestic than foreign affairs.

“Clinton is interested in foreign issues, but he has much less of an instinctive feel for them. Instead of talking softly and carrying a big stick, he is accused of talking loudly, then failing to act.”

He was concerned about his treatment in the UK press. Hillary Clinton was described as “highly intelligent and very highly motivated”.

Clinton’s impressions of the then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, as conveyed to Major, were detailed in a confidential No 10 note. The US president thought Berlusconi had popular appeal “with his six sports teams (and eight champions playing in the World Cup team)” and his “drop-dead cinch ex-actress wife”, it said.

He wrote: “It bore the hallmarks of a hastily arranged programme. The French were disappointed that deputy president [FW] de Klerk chose not to disrupt his Wimbledon/holiday plans.” While the then deputy South African president Thabo Mbeki “simply failed to turn up for his breakfast meeting with Mitterrand (he was abroad)“.

The memo continued: “A particularly awkward moment occurred at the state banquet when President [Nelson] Mandela decided to leave at 22.00, halfway through the soup (Mitterrand having delayed the dinner with a lengthy and mostly off-the-cuff speech)”.

Major, ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1994, was provided with unvarnished profiles of the country’s leadership. Prince Majid-Abdul bin Abdul-Aziz was described as formerly having “a reputation for laziness”, and as a “reluctant governor who has let his province drift”. King Fahd, who was praised for being “extremely shrewd”, was also portrayed as prone to “react badly to contrary advice. Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz was said to be charming but also “inflexible and imperious”.