CRAWFORD, Texas, March 28: President George W. Bush said Thursday he has a message for critics unhappy that he lumped North Korea, Iran and Iraq in an “axis of evil” that may face the United States’ wrath: “I meant it.”

“For the good of our children and our grandchildren, we must deny the world’s most dangerous leaders from having and harbouring the world’s most dangerous weapons,” the president said.

In a series of fund-raising stops since leaving Washington on Wednesday, Bush has on four occasions defended the expression, which drew an international outcry and sparked worries that he could order unilateral military action.

“We will be deliberate. We’ll be thoughtful. We will consult with our friends and allies,” he told a crowd at a political fund-raiser in Dallas, Texas on Thursday. “But when I said axis of evil, I meant it.”

What he meant, according to White House aides, was that current policy towards all three regimes takes insufficient notice of the possibility that they could acquire nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and then hook up with terrorists like those who carried out the September 11 attacks.

Global concern over the remarks has focused on Iraq, amid widespread speculation that the regime in Baghdad could be the next target of the US-led “war on terrorism” once the campaign in Afghanistan is complete.

Bush first used the expression — which admirers have likened to former president Ronald Reagan’s 1982 designation of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” — in his January 29 State of the Union speech to Congress.

He repeated it February 4 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and then two days later at a fund-raiser in New York, when he said: “I talked about an axis of evil because I firmly believe that nations need to be put on notice that this nation will not allow our citizens to become threatened.”

With the expression drawing fire overseas, Bush omitted it from remarks during his February trip to Japan, South Korea and China — though he did remark that he thought the regime in Pyonyang was “evil.”

After a six-week break, the president resurrected the remark in an exchange with reporters in O’Fallon, Missouri, saying: “What I said about the axis of evil is what I mean. And I can’t be any more plain about it.”

“We will not allow one of the world’s most dangerous leaders to have the world’s most dangerous weapons and hold the United States and our friends and allies hostage. That’s just not going to happen,” he said.

After vanishing during Bush’s four-day trip to Latin America last week, the “axis” reappeared at stops in Greenville, South Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, as the president raised funds for fellow Republicans.

“There is an axis of evil in the world, and the United States of America will deal with it in a firm way,” he said in South Carolina as he stumped for Representative Lindsey Graham, who hopes to win a Senate in November elections.

At an event with Greenville rescue workers, Bush said he wanted to explain “right quickly” what he meant by the remark.

“Let me put it to you this way: We cannot allow nations that have got a history of totalitarianism, dictatorship — a nation, for example, like Iraq, that poisoned her own people — to develop a weapon of mass destruction and mate up with terrorist organizations,” he said.—AFP