Biden: 'Mandela thanked me'
Mr Biden - at the time a senator for Delaware - said he had been visiting the country with a delegation of American officials and had planned to visit Mandela in prison. But during the trip, Mr Biden said he had "had the great honour of being arrested with our UN ambassador on the streets of Soweto" while trying to reach the civil rights leader on Robben Island. The town of Soweto is more than 760 miles (1,223km) from Robben Island. At a black history awards brunch in Las Vegas last week, he also said Mandela had thanked him for his efforts. "He threw his arms around me and said, 'I want to say thank you,'" Mr Biden told onlookers. "I said, 'What are you thanking me for, Mr President?' He said: 'You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me.'" Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for 27 years before becoming South Africa's president Mr Biden's account of what happened has been rebuffed by Andrew Young, the US ambassador to the UN at the time, who says he travelled with Mr Biden to South Africa. Local media have also failed to find any evidence of an arrest being made. Fact-checkers at the Washington Post called the claim "ridiculous" on Tuesday as they awarded it four Pinocchios. On Tuesday Mr Biden's deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, told reporters Mr Biden had been referring to an incident when "he was separated from his party at Johannesburg airport". When a journalist noted that being separated did not equate with an arrest, Ms Bedingfield repeated that it had been a "separation". "They, he was not allowed to go through the same door that the - the rest of the party he was with," said Ms Bedingfield. "Obviously, it was apartheid South Africa. There was a white door, there was a black door. He did not want to go through the white door and have the rest of the party go through the black door. He was separated." Fat or fact? Joe Biden got involved in a heated exchange in Iowa The account echoes earlier comments made by Mr Biden, but a statement he made in 2013 gives a different account of his trip. "When I exited the plane I was directed to one side of the tarmac, while the African American congressmen travelling with me were sent to the other side," said Mr Biden. "I refused to break off, and the officials finally relented." He has faced scrutiny for his verbal gaffes and his long and sometimes controversial political career, including his vote in favour of the Iraq war. Republicans have been hammering away at him for his son's lucrative board position with a Ukrainian natural gas firm when he was vice-president and in charge of American-Ukrainian relations. The issue was central to the Trump impeachment case.DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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