MALCOLM BRABANT:

The British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill once described diplomacy as telling somebody to go to hell in such a way that they would ask for directions.

Harry S. Truman, the former American president, said that tact was the ability to stand on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes. The reality is that in Denmark, foreign relations are a walk in the park. It doesn't present the challenges of Russia or China.

But the ambassador, a former Hollywood producer, has not managed to win over foreign policy expert Hans Mouritzen, a traditionalist when it comes to diplomacy.

Don't you think that he's perhaps got some lessons to teach traditional diplomats, in that he seems to be doing an awful lot to be able to promote America's image?

HANS MOURITZEN, Danish Institute for International Studies: Yes, but the thing is that I think that he's promoting his own image, because I think people can understand that it's more his own image than the American image, because people know all kinds of things about U.S. foreign policy which they don't like, but they like Mr. Gifford.