Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates has offered an apology for lighting up in a plane while travelling to Venezuela for an official visit, Agence France-Presse reports.
"I thought that we could smoke as we had done during earlier journeys," Socrates was quoted as saying, following uproar in Portugal, where the opposition demanded he pay a fine for breaking the law. "This episode made me realise that smokers can break the law unwittingly," he said.
Business leaders accompanying the PM on the trip to a trade conference in Venezuela revealed that they had seen him smoking along with his economics minister and other government officials. (pi)
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