Mandela lambastes 'arrogant' Bush over Iraq

Nelson Mandela delivered a stinging personal attack on George Bush and his Iraq policy yesterday. Mr Mandela said the President was shortsighted and arrogant and implied he was a racist in his readiness to ignore the United Nations.

Nelson Mandela delivered a stinging personal attack on George Bush and his Iraq policy yesterday. Mr Mandela said the President was shortsighted and arrogant and implied he was a racist in his readiness to ignore the United Nations.

Urging Americans to take to the streets in protest, the former South African president said Mr Bush was a leader "who has no foresight and cannot think properly". Mr Bush, he said, wanted "to plunge the world into a holocaust".

Delivering a speech in Johannesburg, Mr Mandela asked: "Why is the US behaving so arrogantly?" He went on to accuse Tony Blair of acting like "the foreign minister of the United States". He suggested the countries were acting in such as way "because the secretary general of the UN [Kofi Annan] is now a black man. They [the US and Britain] never did that when secretary generals were white".

The White House brushed aside Mr Mandela's remarks yesterday, pointing to the statement of support for action in Iraq by eight European leaders.

The President was grateful to the many leaders of Europe "who obviously feel differently" from Mr Mandela, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's spokesman, said. He chided "people more comfortable with doing nothing about a growing menace that could turn into a holocaust".

But Mr Mandela went even further. Referring to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, he declared that "if there is a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America".

Such sentiments are not voiced here. But concern at the damage to the reputation of America is widespread. Washington should be wary of actions "that make us look like a bunch of cowboys", Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, warned yesterday.

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