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Former Uri Party chairman Kim Geun-tae counterattacked President Roh Moo-hyun in response to the president¡¯s broadside on him and his rival Uri Party presidential contender a day earlier. ¡°The president is helping the opposition Grand National Party take power,¡± Kim said. Roh in a post on the Cheong Wa Dae website Monday called on Kim and Chung to leave the party instead of insisting on its dissolution. Chung Dong-young, another former Uri chairman, called the president¡¯s attack ¡°an example of the politics of terror.¡±
Kim reminded reporters that Roh repeatedly proposed a grand coalition with the GNP, threatening that he would quit the Uri Party if the proposal was not accepted. ¡°He is hardly a man to demand that former chairman Chung and I leave the party,¡± he said. ¡°The president discouraged Uri presidential contenders by mentioning the need to bring in other presidential candidates from outside. But he also openly criticized outside hopefuls¡± -- former prime minister Goh Kun and former Seoul National University president Chung Un-chan -- ¡°forcing them to withdraw their presidential bids.¡± Kim urged the president, who left Uri in February, to stay out of party affairs.
Chung in a written message to the president also indicated it was hardly appropriate for the president who had sought a coalition with another party that pursues different political goals and led ¡°factional conflict¡± to berate others for sowing disunity. The president¡¯s behavior ¡°is not a leadership of unity,¡± Chung said.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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