Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's warning to the United States not to act like 1938 appeasers of German leader Adolf Hitler is "unacceptable," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday.
"The comments made by the Prime Minister are unacceptable in the president's opinion," said Fleischer, a day after Sharon warned the United States late Thursday not to try to conciliate the Arab world at the expense of Israel.
In his toughest criticism yet of a US bid to rally a coalition behind reprisals for September 11 terror strikes, Sharon warned the United States Thursday: "Don't try to conciliate the Arabs at our expense. We won't accept it."
"I call upon the western democracies, and first of all the United States as the head of the free world, not to commit again the terrible mistake made in 1938 when European democracies sacrificed Czechoslovakia for a temporary solution," he said.
"Israel will not be Czechoslovakia," he warned.
He was alluding to the 1938 Munich conference, when European powers yielded to Hitler and allowed him to take over part of Czechoslovakia to appease the Nazi regime. World War II started a year later.
The United States last week pressured Israel to agree to a cease-fire with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- whom Sharon has compared to prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden -- to allow Washington to bring wary Arab and Muslim states into its coalition against the Islamist dissident based in Afghanistan -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
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