WASHINGTON: Former president Bill Clinton has chastized the Bush administration for suggesting he bears part of the blame for the corporate accounting scandals and said President Bush made a mistake with his first-year Middle East policy.

Clinton, who made the remarks to WJLA-TV Channel 7 as he left a memorial service in Washington on Friday, breached the tradition recent presidents have maintained of refraining from criticizing their successors.

Bush administration officials have suggested that corporate practices got out of hand under the Clinton administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

“These people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you scratch them, they go straight to blame,” Clinton said. “Now, you know, I didn’t blame his father for Somalia when we had that awful day memorialized in “Black Hawk Down.’ I didn’t do that. And I think that’s not a real mark of leadership, and it’s the wrong thing to do.”

The book and film ‘Black Hawk Down’ tell the story of a deadly 1993 attack on US special forces, which had been sent to the famine-ravaged East African country by President George H.W. Bush to safeguard the delivery of food.

A White House official called the remarks “surprising.” Jim Dyke, press secretary of the Republican National Committee, said they were “a typical Clinton response: Attack and politicize.”

When asked if Clinton had contributed to the corporate excesses of the 1990s, Bush said, “No.”

When asked about his SEC chairman, Bush said, “I think Harvey Pitt was put in place to clean up a mess.” Bush’s aides often point out that most of the corporate malfeasance uncovered so far occurred on Clinton’s watch. —Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.