Matters were made worse by the coincidence of this apparent volte face with several others.
He gives much of the credit for this volte face to Ms Claussen.
It alleges that the Libyan authorities "performed a dramatic volte face" when faced with a deadline for surrendering Mr Gaddafi to the ICC and said they wanted to investigate him for war crimes.
BBC: Gaddafi son 'attacked in custody' in Libya, ICC lawyers say
So the transport minister was forced to perform a humiliating volte face and go back to the drawing board - at a cost for the taxpayer which may well run to hundreds of millions of pounds.
The signals coming from the preparatory talks, however, suggest it'll be a wiggle rather than a volte-face.
And it is almost certain that the government will do a volte-face on this.
To be sure, the Bush team will win plaudits domestically for its volte-face on dealing with Iran.
The president's volte-face may have done more damage to Roberto Madrazo, the probable candidate of the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
But the questions raised by Mr Kay's volte-face may only go away if an independent inquiry is set up to answer them.
Maybe the regime plans to stage a dramatic volte-face, suggesting new-found reasonableness in an attempt to yet again be bought off by the West.
The climate sceptic columnist Christopher Booker applauded her volte-face, arguing that previously she had been "under the spell" of her adviser the former UN ambassador Sir Crispin Tickell.
Thus Meg Whitman indulged in harsh rhetoric against illegal immigrants while she was running in the Republican primaries for governor this year, but did a volte-face as soon as she advanced to the general election and faced the entire electorate.
Moreover, Mr Bush has a Reaganesque ability to change direction while claiming that he is sticking to principles: look at his deviations from free-market orthodoxy over agriculture and coal and steel, or his current volte-face in Iraq, during which he dramatically modified American policy.
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