Former South African President and Nobel Peace Laureate Nelson Mandela lashed out at U.S. President George Bush's stance on Iraq saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly. Mandela, a towering statesman respected the world over for his fight against Apartheid-era discrimination, said the U.S. leader and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were undermining the United Nations.

"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq," Mandela told an audience in Johannesburg. "What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust," he added, to loud applause.

"Both Bush as well as Tony Blair are undermining an idea (the United Nations) which was sponsored by their predecessors," Mandela said. "Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations (Ghanaian Kofi Annan) is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white."

(Source: washingtonpost.com, reuters 1/30/03)