Tories say 'Dwarfgate' row handiwork of Labour Party

London: David Cameron is caught up in an extraordinary "dwarfgate" row with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The dispute centres on a claim that Cameron made a remark about "hidden dwarfs" while discussing a photograph showing himself with Sarkozy who is seven inches shorter than the Tory leader.

The French government was reportedly furious about the comment.

And shadow chancellor George Osborne allegedly fuelled the Franco-Tory war by describing a box placed beneath a speaker's lectern as a "Sarkozy box", before bursting into a fit of giggles.

The jibes, made over a period of three days, led to French officials remonstrating with British counterparts, according to BBC2's Newsnight.

The Tories dismissed the dwarfgate report as "nonsense" and claimed it was a "Labour Party plant". A senior Conservative source claimed that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was angry that Sarkozy had agreed to meet Cameron and had even tried to stop the meeting taking place.

The dispute, which took place last September, emerged after Sarkozy visited London on Friday and showered praise on Brown as a "great European and very good friend of mine".

Sarkozy has criticised Cameron's Eurosceptic stance in recent months.

The dwarfgate row erupted when Cameron gave a newspaper interview in his Commons office, in which he appeared to mock Sarkozy. An article described framed photographs on Cameron's desk, two featuring him with Barack Obama and several with Baroness Thatcher. It continued: "...and one with Nicolas Sarkozy that prompts a joke about ‘hidden dwarfs'."

Sarkozy, who is 5 feet and 5 inches tall, is famously sensitive about his height — or lack of it. Photographs of him with Cameron on Friday show how, at 6 feet tall, the Conservative leader towers over the Frenchman.

Three days after the "hidden dwarfs" interview, Osborne added insult to injury by publicly taunting Sarkozy at a business conference in Church House, Westminster, organised by the Right-wing magazine The Spectator. As Osborne, all of 5 feet 11 inches, approached the lectern to make his speech, he stumbled on a box placed there for a previous speaker. Osborne called it a "Sarkozy box" and burst into giggles.

According to the BBC, French officials lodged a protest with their UK counterparts on the grounds that Cameron and Osborne had "failed to show sufficient respect" for the head of state.

Which politician, according to you, should go for classes on political correctness? Do you think height is an issue when it comes to the popularity of a leader?