News of his bid - first reported in the Daily Telegraph and followed up in the Mail - caused some surprise among Commonwealth observers in London.
LONDON: Prince Charles was snubbed by Commonwealth leaders at the closing of their summit in Kampala, a newspaper said a week after the heir to the British throne was reported to have lobbied to succeed his mother as the head of the 53-nation group.
Up to half the leaders invited to a banquet thrown in his honour by the president of Uganda failed to turn up, leaving the prince and his wife Camilla "standing awkwardly in the lobby for more than half an hour," the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
Staff frantically tried to rearrange the tables in order to avoid the embarrassment of no-shows at the Saturday dinner, it said.
"There were an awful lot of no-shows at the last minute. The President's staff was really caught on the hope. It was all rather embarrassing and in stark contrast to the queen's official banquet on Friday which was packed to the rafters with the good and the great," the paper quoted an observer as saying.
Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife arrived 20 minutes after the royal couple, which was described as a serious break of protocol.
The couple, who are said to be much more sympathetic to the monarchy than their predecessors at 10 Downing Street, explained that they were caught up in a "terrible" traffic jam, the newspaper reported.
The report follows an apparent bid by Prince Charles to succeed his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, as the symbolic head of the Commonwealth.
News of his bid - first reported in the Daily Telegraph and followed up in the Mail - caused some surprise among Commonwealth observers in London, who pointed out that the Queen enjoyed her symbolic Commonwealth status in her person rather than as vested in the British crown.
This, they said, disqualified Charles from being Commonwealth head.
According to the Commonwealth, heads of governments at the time of the queen's death will decide the issue.
The majority of Commonwealth countries are republics, 16 have their own monarchies and only a handful still swear allegiance to the British throne.
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