George Osborne `Regrets` Deripaska Yacht Meeting

Shadow finance minister George Osborne apologised on Monday for meeting Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska on his yacht in the Mediterranean, saying he had made an error of judgment.

Osborne, the Conservative party's chief spokesman on finance, said he had neither asked for nor received money from aluminium magnate Deripaska during the meeting last August, but admitted that meeting him still did not look good.

"I think I did make a mistake and I think in politics it's not just what you say or what you do it's how things look," Osborne said in an interview with BBC radio.

"This didn't look very good and I regret that, and I think the real judgment is can you learn from the mistakes you make," Osborne said, adding: "I have changed the way I am going to operate when it comes to fund raising and I will not discuss individual donations with individual donors."

Osborne's meeting with Deripaska was revealed by his friend Nathaniel Rothschild, a multimillionaire banker and business associate of Deripaska's who helped introduce them. He has said Osborne sought a donation from Deripaska at the meeting.

Rothschild revealed Osborne's role because he was angered that Osborne had revealed details of a private conversation he had aboard Deripaska's yacht with another British politician, Peter Mandelson, who also is friends with Rothschild.

"Perhaps in future it would be better if all involved accepted the age-old adage that private parties are just that," Rothschild wrote in a letter to the Times last week, revealing the series of meetings.

Mandelson, who recently left his post as European Union trade commissioner to take up the post of business minister in Gordon Brown's government, said on Monday he had no plans to resign over his own meetings with Deripaska.

Asked by Reuters if he would stand down over meetings with the Russian magnate he said: "Not, that is a fantasy."

At the weekend Mandelson clarified how long he had known Deripaska, saying they first met in 2004, two years earlier than previously stated.

Mandelson has twice been forced to quite the British government in the past over scandals, once over a property loan and another time over the issuance of passports.

"It's notable that other politicians in dealing with these people have not been as open as I have," Osborne told the BBC in an apparent reference to Mandelson. "But I answered those points in a very detailed statement."