US President George W. Bush says the Middle East summit sponsored by former president Bill Clinton resulted in a ``significant intifadah,'' or uprising, repeating an accusation his press secretary got in trouble for uttering.
``It wasn't all that long ago where a summit was called and nothing happened, and as a result we had significant intifadah in the area,'' Bush told Britain's ITV network in an interview taped for his weekend talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Middle East crisis and Bush's decision to send Secretary of State Colin Powell on a peacemaking mission will dominate their talks.
During his last months in office, Clinton was heavily engaged in pressing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to strike an accord, but his intensive diplomacy -- capped by the 2000 Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Camp David presidential retreat -- failed.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, defending Bush against criticism that he had not played an active peacemaking role in contrast to Clinton, said in February that the 17-month uprising broke out during Clinton's presidency.
``In an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted,'' Fleischer said.
Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, lodged a complaint with Bush's national security chief, Condoleezza Rice. She asked Fleischer to retract his comment, though advisers said at the time that Fleischer reflected the president's privately held views.
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