Facing strong condemnation at home and abroad, US President Donald Trump on has denied using the word "shithole" to describe Haiti and African countries, but kept up criticism of a Senate immigration plan that he said would force the United States to admit people from countries that "are doing badly".
Mr Trump reportedly made the remarks at a White House meeting on immigration on Thursday.
US Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who attended the gathering, told reporters on Friday that Trump used "vile, vulgar" language, including repeatedly using the word "shithole" when speaking about African countries. Mr Durbin's claims were backed up by sources who spoke to the Washington Post and not denied by other Republican politicians.
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"I cannot believe that in the history of the White House, in that Oval Office, any President has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our President speak yesterday," said Mr Durbin.
The President's comments were decried as racist by African and Haitian politicians, by the United Nations human rights office and by US lawmakers from both major parties.
Mr Trump, who has been accused of racism over several issues since he took office a year ago, sought to walk back the comments on Friday, saying on Twitter, "The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used."
Mr Trump also denied saying "anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country".
The White House previously hadn't denied the remarks had been said.
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According to two sources, at Thursday's meeting Mr Trump questioned why the United States would want to accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to some as "s...hole countries".
While many Republican lawmakers stayed quiet on Mr Trump's remarks, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, called them "unfortunate" and "unhelpful," noting in an interview on CNN that his family had emigrated to the United States from Ireland to help build the nation's railroads.
At an event on Friday at the White House, Mr Trump honoured the memory of Martin Luther King Jr, the civil-rights era activist who was slain in 1968. Dr King's memory is marked with a national holiday, which falls this year on Monday.
Mr Trump stood beside Isaac Newton Farris, Dr King's nephew, while a group of about 20 African-American supporters and members of his administration were on hand in the Roosevelt Room, including Ben Carson, his Housing and Urban Development secretary. He ignored reporters who shouted questions about his remarks.
A group of Republican and Democratic senators has been working for months to craft legislation that would protect 700,000 young adults who were brought into the country illegally as children and later shielded from deportation under a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Mr Trump also suggested that momentum toward a deal on maintaining such protection had stalled. "The so-called bipartisan DACA deal presented yesterday to myself and a group of Republican Senators and Congressmen was a big step backwards," he said.
The tentative deal also addresses border security, including a border wall, the diversity visa lottery and chain migration, in which US green-card holders can sponsor other family members for permanent residence in the country.
Among other objections, Mr Trump said the plan did not provide proper funding for the proposed wall that he made a centre-piece of his election campaign. He added the country "would be forced to take large numbers of people from high crime countries which are doing badly."
Reuters / Newshub.
