Double luxury ends a tantrum at the top

By Warren Gamble

Take the leaders of two former enemy superpowers, put them in a hotel with only one luxury suite ... and you have the recipe for a diplomatic disaster.

But New Zealand taxpayers have saved a loss of face for China's President Jiang Zemin and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi by paying for a makeover of Mr Obuchi's suite at the Sheraton Hotel.

Presidents rate higher than Prime Ministers under international protocol, so President Jiang got the hotel's best room, the perhaps inappropriately titled Royal Suite.

That left Prime Minister Obuchi with a not-so-grand executive suite. This just would not do.

So Apec organisers stepped in with taxpayer money - they won't say how much - to transform the Japanese leader's three-day Auckland haven into the Imperial Suite.

The hotel's general manager, Brett Butcher, said the money was spent on new furnishings to make the suite "appropriate to a Prime Minister." No physical alterations were made - meaning President Jiang will have the bigger bathroom.

For security reasons, Mr Butcher would not say which floors the two men were on. But he denied suggestions from hotel insiders that neither delegation wanted to be below the other.

The leaders' entourages each take up half of the hotel's 410 rooms, but with relations between the two countries still frayed, they are in separate sections and are likely to meet one another only in the lobby.

Shared meals are not on the menu as the Chinese will eat in their own banquet rooms, while the Japanese are more likely to head for the hotel sushi bar.

Mr Butcher said Apec officials had decreed that hotel staff must treat the two delegations equally "so one does not feel it is getting a particular privilege over the other."

Hotels have been told to keep quiet about which leaders they are hosting, but the resting places of the famous have become an increasingly open secret:
Carlton: New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Chile.

Stamford Plaza: United States.

Sheraton: China, Japan.

Heritage: Indonesia, Mexico.

Centra: Canada, Vietnam.

Hyatt Regency: Australia, Russia and two others, possibly Singapore and Hong Kong.

Park Regency: Philippines.

City Life: Taiwan, Papua New Guinea.

Unknown: Peru