As prime minister, I was able often to meet people, to try to understand their needs and the country's economic situation - but it wasn't as if I was planning or ever expected to become president, so I wasn't thinking back then of what I would do if I was in this position, I was just trying to understand the problems and challenges.

One big difference between our situation in Myanmar and other situations around the world is that we're not just trying to achieve peace with one group but 11 groups - so it is incredibly complicated as well.

People would like to see peace and stability, and that is why we have had engagement with the ethnic armed groups. That's why our reform process is based on the wishes and the will of the people.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.

I would prefer being in a hard battle; however, I will be satisfied with whatever happens to me in this war, if only the country comes out of this peril safe and to the satisfaction of the finest and best government on earth.

I really am not going to get involved in a discussion about the legal position of the Iraq war. I am not the person to do that because I am not sufficiently impartial as a lawyer about this, because it's a matter that is of interest to the person that I am closest to in the world.

Hamas is responsible for countless homicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israeli citizens. They have waged a terror war with the sole intent of murdering innocent people.