01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, June 8, 2006

If you're heading to Vienna later this month, don't plan on staying at the exclusive Imperial Hotel. It's full up.

President Bush is going to Vienna for the annual European Union - United States summit meeting, scheduled for June 21. He wanted to stay on historic Ring Boulevard, in the Imperial Hotel's Royal Suite. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan stayed there, and so did President Bush's father. But this president has been told that he can't have the prestigious suite because Mick Jagger has already reserved it and won't give it up.

The Rolling Stones are playing a concert in Vienna at the same time that President Bush will be there, and The Mick has already booked the $8,000-a-night Royal Suite, as well as all the other rooms on the same floor.

There's no room at the inn for the president of the United States. The grand old Imperial will be full of Rolling Stones and their followers.

The Imperial's Royal Suite is ranked among the top 100 hotel rooms/suites in the world. Mick, old Keith Richards (better after falling out of that palm tree), et al. will be ensconced amidst the Royal Suite's precious antiques, soaking up the atmosphere of old Vienna, while the leader of the Free World has to settle for lesser digs elsewhere in the city.

The president's people apparently thought that Jagger would just hand over the suite when they asked him to. Now they're red-faced because they couldn't talk the unimpressed rocker into giving it up for the president.

It's turned into a shoot-out between the head of the most powerful nation and the leader of the oldest rock-and-roll band. It's over Austrian opulence -- marble bathrooms and walls cocooned in silk. This is my kind of crisis.

-- Truman Taylor (trumanbtaylor@aol.com)