U.S. paying for past mistakes: Clinton

WASHINGTON, NOV. 9. The former U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, has said terror has existed in America for hundreds of years and that the nation is ``paying a price today'' for its past mistakes.

The former U.S. President, who received a warm welcome from a 1000-strong audience at his Alma Mater Georgetown University yesterday, said: ``Here in the United States, we were founded as a nation that practised slavery''. ``This country once looked the other way when a significant number of Native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human. And we are still paying a price today,'' he said.

International terrorism, Mr. Clinton said, has only just reached the U.S. but dates back thousands of years. ``In the first Crusades, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was a Muslim on the Temple Mount. I can tell you that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it,'' he recalled.

- PTI

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Section  : International
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