It appears Canada's prime minister doesn't like having his photo taken.
In L'Aquila, Italy on Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was late to arrive at a G8 summit photo shoot, leaving his world leader colleagues standing around while they waited for him to show up.
Other dignitaries started calling out the prime minister's name, when it was apparent that Harper was not at the Thursday shoot.
Harper was then seen rushing to the shoot with his entourage, arriving about two minutes after U.S. President Barack Obama had jogged in late to the same shoot.
When the prime minister arrived, he got cheers from the dignitaries who had been waiting for him for about a minute and 40 seconds.
In the end, Harper was able to make the shoot, unlike Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who pulled up on a golf cart after the photo op was over.
Harper's spokesperson, Dimitri Soudas, declined to give details on why the prime minister arrived late to the photo shoot.
"I don't think you're paying attention to the summit ... The prime minister was at the photo op," Soudas said Thursday.
Harper's gaffe follows another photo foul-up that took place in April, at the G20 meeting in London.
On that occasion, Harper missed the photo shoot entirely, causing it to be restaged an hour later.
Officially, Harper said he was "detained in some consultations with officials," though it was rumoured he was in the bathroom at the time of the April shoot. (The prime minister denied that this was the case.)
"I've been in enough of these to know there's always another photo op," Harper joked at a London news conference on April 2.
The incident in Italy came only days after Harper was accused of making another social faux-pas, at the Catholic memorial service for former governor general Romeo LeBlanc in Memramcook, N.B., last week.
The prime minister was accused of taking a communion wafer at the service and not consuming it.
Soudas, however, has said the prime minister "immediately" swallowed the wafer, after taking it at the service.
While in Italy, the prime minister is scheduled to meet with Pope Benedict on Saturday.
With a report from CTV's Roger Smith
