Thursday, September 14 2006 13:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: A top Republican lawmaker has slammed Democrats for criticizing Bush administration's foreign policy on Iran saying the only thing that they have been consistent is they were 'consistently wrong' on the issue.

"It strains the limit of humour to hear the foreign policy elite of the Democratic Party attempt to blame US President George W Bush for enabling Iran to become a global menace," Chairman of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives Henry Hyde said.

"For, it was a Democratic President Jimmy Carter who presided over the seizure of power in Tehran by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, with a mixture of ineptitude and admiration.

"And it was Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who oversaw this disastrous foreign policy," Hyde said in a statement.

He was responding to Democrats' critique of the Bush's policy on Iran that confined to not only law makers on Capitol Hill but former senior officials of Democratic administrations like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright of the Carter and Clinton administrations.

"Instead of the improved relations the Carter Administration predicted, the Iranians seized our diplomats, who were forced to endure 444 days of captivity.

"They were only released after the Carter Administration negotiated a considerable ransom, when Ronald Reagan was about to be inaugurated," the top Republican maintained and adding that the pattern continued during the next Democratic administration.