Washington, Apr. 10: Republican strategist Karl Rove has called Vice President Joe Biden a "liar" for claiming that he scolded former President George W Bush in private meetings.

"I hate to say this, but he''s a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind, I would say liar. But it is a habit he ought to drop," Fox News quoted Rove, as saying.

"You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the Vice President of the United States," he added.

Biden''s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although Biden spokesman Jay Carney told Fox on Wednesday: "The vice president stands by his remarks."

Carney was referring to two controversial assertions by Biden, the latest coming Tuesday during an interview on CNN.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden began, "''Well, Joe,'' he said, ''I''m a leader.'' And I said: ''Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.''"

The exchange is purely "fictional," said Rove, who was Bush''s top political adviser in the White House.

"It didn''t happen," Rove, a FOX News contributor and former Bush adviser, told Megyn Kelly in an interview taped for "On The Record." "It''s his imagination; it''s a made-up, fictional world.

"He ought to get out of it and get back to reality," Rove added. "He''s making this up out of whole cloth."

Rove''s skepticism was echoed by a variety of other Bush aides, including former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, chief of staff Andy Card and legislative liaison Candida Wolff.

They also disputed a similar assertion made by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues at a lunch that he had challenged Bush''s moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

Rove has ridiculed the claim that Biden spent "a lot of hours alone with" Bush.

"Joe Biden was never alone with the president for more than few moments," Rove said.

Rove was equally appalled by Biden''s claims of having given Bush his comeuppance.

"If you notice, all of these incidents have the same structure: Joe Biden courageously raises the impudent question; the president befuddles the answer; and Joe Biden drives home the dramatic response."

Throughout his career, Biden has often been accused of boasting about his accomplishments, embellishing his credentials and even stealing the words of others. He dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

Last July, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq. When questioned by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled by saying: "I was near where a shot landed." (ANI)