WASHINGTON, July 29 — The United States on Thursday denounced as “inexcusable” and reminiscent of the Nazi era remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who warned against creating “peoples of mixed race.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price read to reporters a statement from US envoy against anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt, who said that she was “deeply alarmed” by the nationalist prime minister’s “use of rhetoric that clearly evokes Nazi racial ideology.”

Decades “after the end of the Holocaust, it is inexcusable for a leader to make light of Nazi mass murder,” Lipstadt said.

Price added that the United States and its allies around the world are united by “shared values” along with interests.

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“The remarks that we heard from Prime Minister Orban are not reflective of the shared values that tether the United States to Hungary, that serve as a foundation between the relationship between our two peoples and that serve as the basis for the relationship between the United States and our other allies,” Price said.

Orban, a hero for many on the US far right, sparked a storm of criticism after he warned in a speech in Romania’s Transylvania region, home to a Hungarian community, against mixing with “non-Europeans.”

He said Thursday that he was misunderstood and that he rejected anti-Semitism, explaining that he was speaking from a “cultural” standpoint. — AFP

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