Bush says he won't talk to terrorists, assails those who will

"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 told the Knesset in Jerusalem today.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," he said. "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."

Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for the Democratic frontrunner in the U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama, called Bush's remarks "an unprecedented political attack on foreign soil," in an interview on CNN. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush wasn't referring to Obama.

"There are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that President Bush thinks we should not have," she told reporters traveling with Bush. "This is long-established United States policy," she said.

A White House national-security spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said Bush was referring to "a wide range of people, not any single person."

Carter, Hamas

Former President Jimmy Carter met last month with leaders of Hamas, listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization for its attacks on Israelis, and he urged the Bush administration to enter into a dialogue with the Palestinian militant group to try to forge a peace deal.

The issue of negotiating with terrorists has resonated in the presidential campaign.

Obama, asked in February on CNN if he would meet with U.S. adversaries including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said, "I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies."

Obama subsequently opposed Carter's decision to confer with Hamas. "We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements," he said.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain suggested last month to reporters that Hamas favors Obama.

Bush, in his speech to the Knesset, prophesied a peaceful Middle East 60 years from now. The Palestinians "will have the homeland they have long dreamed of," he said, although he didn't say when.

Ceremonial Visit