An embarrassed Pakistan government has hastily removed a poem from an English textbook for schoolchildren, after it emerged that the first letters of its 20 lines add up to spell 'President George W Bush' and appeared to eulogise the American leader.
The Education Ministry has decided to reprint the textbook for class XI students next year, removing the anonymous poem titled 'The Leader', which had turned into an embarrassment for the government after a furore by opposition politicians.
"We have decided to delete the poem from the book, published by the National Book Foundation, and prescribed for federal board students," a spokesman of the Education Ministry was quoted as saying on Tuesday by Daily Times newspaper.
"It will be stretching the matter too far to assert that the poem was inserted in the book deliberately to enumerate the qualities of the American president," the spokesperson said.
The official said the ministry was investigating how a series of committees employed to monitor and censor the contents of all text books failed to notice the acrostic.
The poem would not appear in the next edition of the book, he said, adding that the book was printed in 2004 for the first time after the government in Islamabad decided to deregulate the publication of textbooks.
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