May 28 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush likened talking with rogue leaders to Britain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler, which in 1938 led to German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia. Czech President Vaclav Klaus disagrees.

``We must be tough vis-à-vis the opponents, the adversaries including terrorists,'' Klaus, 66, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday in Washington. ``On the other hand, it does not mean that negotiating is a priori wrong.''

Bush's May 15 remarks to Israel's Knesset, which tied advocates of negotiating with ``terrorists and radicals'' to those who backed concessions to Hitler in the run-up to World War II, triggered a political furor in the U.S.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama's campaign interpreted the remarks as criticism of the senator from Illinois, who has said that as president he would meet with opponents of the U.S., including Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad's government has rejected United Nations demands to curb a nuclear development program that the U.S. and several of its European allies suspect may be aimed at building a nuclear bomb. Ahmadinejad deepened concerns with public comments calling for the destruction of Israel.

Bush, describing talks with radicals as a ``foolish delusion,'' alluded in his Israel speech to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's agreement in 1938 to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain returned home from Berlin declaring that he had achieved a ``peace in our time'' that would prevent a war.

`Tragic Mistake'

Chamberlain erred in what he agreed to, not in talking to Hitler, Klaus said. ``It was simply accepting his views,'' he said. ``That's a tragic mistake.''

Seventy years later, the Czech Republic is trying to strengthen ties with the U.S. to improve its security.

Klaus predicted a deal with the U.S. to base radar on Czech soil as part of a broader missile-defense shield, will be approved by year's end. Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's coalition currently lacks the necessary majority in parliament to approve the plan.

``That the opposition is against something that the government is proposing is quite normal anywhere in the world,'' Klaus said in the interview. He said discussion in the parliament could begin ``in several weeks.''

What's important about the deal is ``the relationship of our two countries,'' Klaus said, not whether Iran or North Korea pose a missile threat to Europe, the argument the Bush administration makes for building such a system.

Russian Stance

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said May 22 that his country will take ``appropriate'' measures in response to the deployment of the missile-defense system and called the installations in the Czech Republic and Poland ``a threat to Russian interests.''

Klaus said Medvedev's comments didn't worry him and that the Russian leader needed to say such things ``for domestic consumption.''

Klaus, a staunch critic of global-warming warnings championed worldwide by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, is in Washington promoting the English-language version of his new book ``Blue Planet in Green Shackles.''

The Czech president, elected to a second five-year term in February, met yesterday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and will see Vice President Dick Cheney today.

Klaus, in a speech to the National Press Club, argued that environmentalists are exaggerating the threat of global warming.

Opposes Legislation

In the interview, he criticized a bill cosponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and John Warner, a Virginia Republican, which would adopt a ``cap-and- trade'' system that places a limit on carbon emissions and allows polluters to buy and sell carbon credits. The bill is set to be debated in the Senate June 2.

Klaus, an economist and former finance minister, called cap-and-trade ``fashionable,'' ``politically correct'' and the ``wrong idea.''

``I think that fossil fuels are already sufficiently taxed now, at least in my country and in Europe, that to add anything to that is in my understanding unnecessary,'' said Klaus, who in his new book doubts that global warming is man-made.

``I always suggested let the market play the game itself,'' he said. ``Don't intervene in the functioning of the market sector. Subsidies, as they are given to ethanol production and all of that, created such imbalances in the world economy. You see it in the growing food prices all over the world.''

Communist Planning

A cap-and-trade system ``is something which resembles very much the dreams of communist central planners,'' Klaus said when answering questions after making remarks at the National Press Club yesterday.

In his book, the Czech president argues that environmentalism seeks to restrict human activities no matter the cost.

``The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism,'' Klaus writes. ``It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 27, 2008 19:38 EDT