Bush stirs up US campaign with 'appeasement' remark

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush stirred up the campaign to replace him on Thursday, suggesting Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's pledge to meet Iran's leader was akin to U.S. appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War Two.

Bush's comments, made in Jerusalem to the Israeli parliament during celebrations marking Israel's 60th anniversary, triggered a mountain of scathing Democratic criticism, and Obama defended his position.

"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," Bush said.

Without mentioning Obama by name, Bush compared "this foolish delusion" to the prelude to World War Two.

"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," he said.

The United States entered the war more than two years after the German invasion of Poland when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941.

Bush, who has generally avoided talking about the campaign to elect a new president in November, drew a sharp response from Obama, the first-term Illinois senator who is close to defeating rival Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama maintains he would be willing to meet with leaders of hostile nations like Iran, Syria and Cuba. He argues the United States blundered by refusing to talk to them.