These things happen; says Krishna on his faux pax

New Delhi/New York, Feb 13 (PTI) "Dear Krishna, all isforgiven. Don''t catch the wrong flight."

This is not a message to the External Affairs Ministerfrom his boss, the Prime Minister but is what Dr Yum YumSingh, a fictitious Manmohan Singh, wrote on his Twitter todaycommenting on Krishna''s faux pax in the UN Security Council(UNSC) on Friday.

At the UNSC meeting, Krishna began reading the wrongspeech by inadvertently reading the Portuguese ForeignMinister''s English translation of his text for about threeminutes before being corrected by India''s envoy to the UNHardeep Singh Puri.

Krishna''s mistake made headlines in the media backhome and the Pakistani press gleefully played it up too.

A lot of traffic was generated on social networkingsites since the goof up became public with many bloggerspoking fun at the expense of the External Affairs Minister butleaving many others wondering what the fuss was all about.

After all many a public figure have committed such gaffes.

US President Barack Obama began reading the speech ofthe Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen at the UN in 2009 afterthe teleprompter mixed up their speeches.

Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan GParthasarathy, now a well-known commentator on ForeignAffairs, said, "It is a mistake which even Obama has made. Itmakes good gossip, but more important is what he said insubstantive terms. It can happen. Everybody in the SecurityCouncil knows that ministers are busy people. It is not anembarassment for the country."

K Natwar Singh, one of Krishna''s predecessors, declinedto say anything on the episode.

"He has been a friend for 30 years and I would not liketo comment," he said.

As for Krishna himself, he described the incident asunfortunate but said there was nothing wrong in it.

"There was nothing wrong in it," Krishna said, adding"there were so many papers spread in front of me so by mistakethe wrong speech was taken out."

"Unfortunately, it happened," he said, noting thatmany of these speeches contain the same thing in the firstparagraph, which is to convey greetings to the countrypresiding over the Security Council

India got the rotating non-permanent seat at the UNSCfor a two-year period from January one after nearly twodecades..