Bush sees talks with Ahmadinejad as "appeasement"

By Matt Spetalnick

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday decried his critics' calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two.

Bush's comment in a speech to Israel's parliament was widely interpreted as a swipe at Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, who has advocated talks without preconditions with leaders of such hostile nations as Iran and Cuba.

Though Bush did not name names, Obama quickly issued a blistering response accusing the president of launching a "false political attack."

But the White House denied Bush was referring to the Illinois senator when, drawing parallels to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he denounced those he said had urged him to talk to "terrorists and radicals."

Bush's rebuff to his critics also followed a Middle East visit by former President Jimmy Carter, who met Hamas leaders shunned by Israel and Washington and urged efforts to draw the militant group into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Bush used his speech to the Israeli Knesset to ratchet up his rhetoric against Iran, saying Washington stood by the Jewish state in opposing Tehran's "nuclear weapons ambitions."

But his words also resonated in the presidential campaign, which has increasingly overshadowed him in his final year in office as the Democratic candidates have sharpened criticism of his foreign policy, including the unpopular war in Iraq.

Bush, who has refused any contact with Ahmadinejad, said the Iranian president "dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map," and lumped him together in an anti-Israel camp with Hamas, Hezbollah and Osama bin Laden.