Kerry attacks Bush's 'arrogant' diplomacy

President Bush's Democratic Party challenger, John Kerry, sharpened his criticisms of the administration's policies in Iraq yesterday, denouncing the White House as "stunningly ineffective in diplomacy" and saying only a change of president could re-establish US credibility around the world.

In his first full-length television interview since winning his party's presidential nomination, Senator Kerry sought to answer charges that he had himself flip-flopped in his support for the war and that he was unrealistic in expecting the UN or Nato to step into the Iraqi miasma and achieve stability.

Under a barrage of tough questioning from NBC's Tim Russert, the dean of US political interviewers, Mr Kerry sounded more impassioned than on some recent occasions. But he arguably remained more effective at attacking the Bush administration than he was at suggesting alternatives.

"Our diplomacy has been about as arrogant and ineffective as anything that I have ever seen, and if you ask people all around the world, that's exactly what they'll tell you," he said. "You cannot bring other nations to the table through the back door," he said. "You cannot have America run the occupation, make all the reconstruction decisions, make the decisions of the kind of government that will emerge, and pretend to bring other nations to the table."

more