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FACTBOX-Previous US comments about Kim Jong-il

06 Dec 2007 15:41:19 GMT
Source: Reuters

Dec 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush wrote to North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il and told him Pyongyang must make good on its promise to reveal all details of its nuclear programs, the White House said on Thursday.

No other details were disclosed of the contents of the unusual personal communication from Bush to a communist dictator he has professed to loathe. Following are some of the comments made in the past about the Korean leader:

- "I loathe Kim Jong-il," Bush told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in an August 2002 interview. "I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people."

- At a closed-door meeting with Republican senators in May 2003, Bush called Kim a "Pygmy" and compared him to a "spoiled child at a dinner table," according to Newsweek.

- Bush referred to "a tyrant in North Korea" at a meeting in Brazil in November 2005.

- In his 2002 State of the Union speech, Bush said North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, constituted an "axis of evil."

- Bush called North Korea a "heartless country" after meeting with dissidents in April 2006 and said they left because "they did not want to have their child grow up in a society that was brutal, a society that did not respect the human condition."

- Condoleezza Rice said in May 2006 interview with Fox News that North Korea should be termed "evil." "I know sometimes in America we have trouble using words like 'evil,' and I know that there can be dangers inherent in using it," she said. "But there's some acts, some regimes, that act in that way." (Compiled by Andy Sullivan in Washington, editing by Alan Elsner)

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Last updated:Thu Dec 6 15:40:25 2007