The Guardian reported that Mr Chirac told the Maltese delegation at the European Council “they would not need a seat on the more efficient European Commission after 2014”.

“Faithful reader of The Malta Independent on Sunday, I discovered with mixed feelings that the article published on 20 June, page 52, by your most respected organ, a quotation borrowed from a foreign newspaper concerning a conversation between my Head of State and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi did give, in fact, a totally distorted description of the atmosphere characterising the bilateral relations so trustfully interwoven between our respective leaders,” Mr Chrismant wrote.

“I noted that one day later, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta himself decided to give the lie to allegation of the same kind spread by an other organ of the same country,” Mr Chrismant added

The French ambassador was referring to a story carried in The Sunday Telegraph which said that the French President hit out at those countries who had not supported French-backed Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt to succeed Romano Prodi as head of the Commission.

“At one point,” The Sunday Telegraph reported, “Mr Chirac accused Malta – a nation whose entire population, delegates noted, had been awarded the George Cross for its courage in the Second World War – of ‘moral cowardice’. There were audible gasps around the table. It was, British diplomats smugly observed, the eve of Waterloo Day.”

But when contacted by The Times, Dr Gonzi replied: “At no point did Mr Chirac make such a claim. I was present at the dinner and I don't remember hearing those words. At that point, the proposed names for the appointment of the new commission president had not even been officially

communicated.”

However, the story still made news all round the world and, instead of the Maltese people being told they were “moral cowards” some stories claimed that it was Dr Gonzi himself who was termed “morally deficient”.

A report on the website Tech Central Station says “One observer of the closed-door summit meeting told me that Chirac did more damage to the cause by trying to bully smaller EU countries into accepting his candidate. When Malta, a new EU entrant, abstained from a round of voting on Verhofstadt (probably because they'd never heard of him), Chirac accused the leaders of the tiny country of being “morally deficient”.

The news service commented that “besides being rude”, was a replay of Chirac's earlier taunt to the incoming new members who signed a letter supporting US policy in Iraq that they had a “missed a good opportunity to shut up”.

Another attempt is due to be made this week to reach a consensus on the new Commission president.