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Tuesday June 3, 14:32 PM<br><br>Bush congressional ally says China run by 'decrepit tyrants'<br><br>One day after US President George W. Bush met with the new Chinese president and invited him to the United States, a key congressional ally said China was run by "decrepit tyrants" and placed it among US foes in the war on terror.<br><br>Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who like the president hails from Texas, also said Monday the "one China" policy followed by the United States since the 1970s was "a diplomatic contrivance" that "unfortunately ... has been elevated by some to the status of 'doctrine.'<br><br>"The (People's Republic of China) is a backward, corrupt anachronism run by decrepit tyrants: old apparatchiks clinging to their dying regime," DeLay said in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank here, where Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard Cheney, works as a senior fellow.<br><br>"The notion that these oppressive and dangerous men could convince the United States that their murderous ideology should be imposed on a free and independent Taiwan is absurd. And refusing to say so, for fear of upsetting Beijing, is not tact: it is infantilism."<br><br>The venomous remarks came after Bush met Sunday with Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, and invited him to visit Washington.<br><br>The visit is likely to take place either later this year or in early 2004, according to a senior US official.<br><br>The Evian meeting was the first formal encounter between the two leaders since Hu became Chinese president in March.<br><br>But, according to DeLay, Bush "understands that -- for the foreseeable future -- there will be no such thing as a foreign policy question unrelated to the war on terror.<br><br>"He understands that, like misery, evil loves company, and that it must be fought, in all its forms, with all our means, for as long as it threatens the security of the civilized world."<br><br>DeLay argued that because of what he called Bush's "clarity," the al-Qaeda Islamist militant group blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States was on the run, 50 million Afghanis and Iraqis were free and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had been removed from the negotiating table with Israel.<br><br>"And that same clarity will ensure the course of Asian history is set by free men and free nations," DeLay stressed.<br><br>Print Me Now! - Back to Original Article <b off></b> <b off></b>
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