Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today defended himself after President George W. Bush compared his plan to hold talks with Iran to the appeasement of the Nazis.
|
| President Bush compared Obama's plan to hold talks with Iran to the appeasement of the Nazis. |
Mr Obama has pledged to “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran without preconditions in a bid to help stability in Iraq, and has also said he would talk to Cuba’s new leader Raul Castro.
But, without naming Mr Obama, Mr Bush told politicians in Israel that the Illinois senator’s plan had been “repeatedly discredited by history”.
In a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, Mr Bush said: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.‘
“We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Mr Obama responded: "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack."
"George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicisation of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel," he said.
Republican John McCain, who has clinched his party's presidential nomination, did not repeat the word "appeasement" when asked about Mr Bush's comments as he campaigned in Ohio.
Robert Gibbs, of the Obama campaign, highlighted that Mr Bush's defence secretary told the Washington Postyesterday that the United States needed to "sit down and talk" with Iran.
AP