An unskittish ruffler of diplomatic feathers

Fact File

Name: Jean Kennedy Smith

Age: 70 next month

Occupation: US ambassador to Ireland since 1993

Why she's in the news: Under attack from former London-based colleague Ray Seitz, who has branded her "wilful and skittish" and "an ardent IRA apologist".

Whoever said diplomats were dull? The former US ambassador to Britain, Ray Seitz, accuses Jean Kennedy Smith of being "skittish" but the same word could best be used to describes his own folksy, eccentric - and most undiplomatic - memoirs.

More seriously for the US ambassador to Ireland and leading member of America's biggest political dynasty, he accuses his former colleague of wanting "to promote the reunification of Ireland".

"Jean Kennedy Smith, who distrusted her own staff and penalised them for their dissent, became a promotion agent for [Gerry] Adams. Too shallow to understand the past and too naive to anticipate the future, she was an ardent IRA apologist," he writes in his memoirs, Over Here.

Most of Mr Seitz's book is taken up with dewy-eyed reflections on his developing love for Britain: "My pulse still jumps when I see the spire of an old country church beyond a hedgerow lane, and I float away when I hear an English choir. I tingle at the crinkly sound of a footfall on frosty Scottish grass. I know nothing kinder than a British nurse nor braver than a British soldier . . ."

Mr Seitz, who was born in Honolulu and is the son of a US major general but has lived in Britain since retirement, has clearly gone native. He even poses with his dogs for a photograph on the dust jacket of the book, looking for all the world like a landed duke about to head out on a pheasant shoot.

But there is the keen smell of wounded pride in the chapters that recall his turf wars with a most unskittish Kennedy Smith. "As hard as I tried, she seemed unable to comprehend that her responsibilities as ambassador to Ireland did not extend north of the Border and that she was meant to represent administration policy as opposed to her own."

In Mr Seitz's view - one traditionally shared by the US State Department - the North was his exclusive bailiwick. However, Mrs Kennedy Smith, as a political trouble-shooter rather than a career diplomat, claimed a personal mandate from Bill Clinton to oversee Irish affairs, North and South.

The pair met "for two stiff hours" in London but failed to resolve their differences. "I have never had a more unpleasant encounter with an American diplomatic colleague," he recalls.

But this was an unequal struggle. As Mr Seitz admits, his political weight in Washington was "feather-like" compared to that of a Kennedy. When the two rowed again over the issuing of a US visa to Gerry Adams, the London envoy was quickly rolled over.

With all the aces up her sleeve, Mrs Kennedy Smith could afford to be restrained this week. She issued a statement describing the allegations as "outrageous and inflammatory" but mostly relied on others to damn Mr Seitz. President Clinton said he had "full confidence" in his appointee and John Hume launched an angry attack on the former ambassador.

For the occupant of the Phoenix Park's other stately home, this week's spat is merely a rerun of previous rows with the US State Department, which has traditionally taken its cue on the North from London.

In 1996, she had her knuckles rapped by the State Department for allegedly retaliating against two of her own officials who opposed the visa decision. An internal report criticised her management style as "antagonistic to collegial, open and professional discourse".

But ruffling feathers was inevitable, given Mrs Kennedy Smith's brisk, ground-breaking version of diplomacy. Contrast this with Mr Seitz's characterisation of "the Irish problem": "Northern Ireland always seemed to me to be an issue without a resolution, a vicious debate that had fallen into a revolving pattern, a circle that could not be squared."

The ambassador had no diplomatic experience before she parachuted into Dublin in 1993, but as an 11-year-old she lived in 14 Prince's Gate, the grand US ambassador's residence in London, when her father, Joe Kennedy, was pre-war ambassador to the Court of St James's.

The fourth child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, she raised four children herself with her husband, Stephen Smith, who died in 1990. In 1974 she founded the Very Special Arts programme to encourage art for the mentally disabled. The organisation is now in 55 countries, including Ireland.

A friend describes her as "discreet but determined, a supporter of peaceful nationalism and imbued with a strong humanitarian streak". Like most people in Dublin political circles, he dismisses Mr Seitz's attack: "This has more to do with internal US politics and frustrated ambition than Jean Kennedy Smith herself."

The ambassador herself may not be staying in the Park for much longer anyway. Smith will be 70 next month, and is long past the normal three-year stint for ambassadors. And when she goes, Dublin will probably revert to being a sleepy diplomatic outpost where ageing male Irish-American ambassadors work on their golf swing.