George Bush gave a rare insight into his struggle with pronunciation yesterday when the White House mistakenly released an unedited script of his speech to the UN General Assembly.

The President, famous for mangling the pronunciation of “nuclear”, coining words such as “misunderestimate” and once forgetting the name of President Musharraf of Pakistan, gets a phonetic guide to key foreign names, the text reveals.

Mr Bush is coached not only on far-flung foreign places such as “KEYR-geez-stan” but also the name of his new French ally, President “sar-KO-zee”. He received no aid with the pronunciation of the Burmese opposition leader, and duly stumbled when he tried to pronounce “Aung San Suu Kyi”.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Times that all presidential speeches contained phonetic guides, but passing the unedited version to the press was an “oversight”. The accidental release of the pronunciation guide marred an otherwise eloquent address to the 192-nation UN General Assembly, Mr Bush urged member states to join in a “mission of liberation” and predicted that “the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end” in Cuba.

“This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence; to combat disease, illiteracy, and ignorance and poverty and despair,” he said.

Making only a passing reference to the war in Iraq, Mr Bush saluted “young democracies” in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, and called on the world to support the “moderate” leaders of the Palestinian lands.

The President gave warning that extremists were trying to impose a “hateful vision” on the world, although he did not mention al-Qaeda by name. “In the long run the best way to defeat extremists is to defeat their dark ideology with a more hopeful vision – the vision of liberty.”

Mr Bush excoriated the “brutal regimes” in Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe and looked ahead to the end of Fidel Castro’s rule.

“The Cuban people are ready for their freedom,” he said. “As that nation enters a period of transition, the UN must insist on free speech, free assembly and, ultimately, free and competitive elections.”

The Cuban delegation walked out, calling Mr Bush’s speech “arrogant and mediocre”. Most of the US delegation in turn left the room when President Ahmadinejad rose to speak, reiterating that Iran’s nuclear programme was “completely peaceful and transparent”.

The major powers had “lost the competence to lead the world,” the Iranian leader declared. “Palestine and Iraq will be liberated from the domination of the occupiers, and the people of America and Europe will be free of the pressures exerted by the Zionists.”

This is how he says it

Pronunciation guides from the mistakenly released speech:

Sarkozy sar-KO-zee
Mugabe moo-GAH-bee
Harare hah-RAR-ray
Kyrgyzstan KEYR-geez-stan
Mauritania moor-EH-tain-ee-a

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