WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is looking to get his campaign back on track today after making a strong effort to distance himself from his controversial former pastor.

An angry Obama told reporters yesterday he was “outraged” by what he called a “performance” by Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday and added that he was “saddened by the spectacle.”

Wright used the forum to reiterate some of his charges against the U.S. government, including his suggestion that the government invented the AIDS virus to destroy “people of color.”

Obama calls the comments “divisive and destructive” and says “they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”

The Illinois senator will hold a major rally tonight at Indiana University six days before crucial Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Thirteen hours after his former pastor startled some with a defiant performance that was televised nationwide, Obama urged 18,000 supporters to stay calm and shrug off such “distractions.”

By the next afternoon, however, his tone was dramatically different.

The Illinois senator summoned reporters Tuesday to say he was outraged by the Rev. Wright’s “divisive and destructive” remarks, scrambling to contain the flare-up in a controversy that has dogged him since clips of some of Wright’s most objectionable remarks began circulating on TV and the Internet.

Obama said he belatedly condemned Wright’s remarks because he did not see a transcript or video of Monday’s appearance until the next day.

Doubtless, too, campaign aides were inundated with calls and messages Tuesday urging a stronger reaction.

But Obama’s struggle to find the right tone — six weeks ago he said he couldn’t disown the pastor he’s known for 20 years — also reflects a striking difference in how Democratic voters view the controversy and its proper handling, a point made clear in interviews in North Carolina this week, ahead of the May 6 primary.

Black voters, in particular, urge Obama to rise above campaign attacks and dustups, saying he is not responsible for what Wright says. Many white voters say they were deeply troubled and baffled by Obama’s association with Wright, even before the preacher reiterated some of his most incendiary comments on Monday.

At the heart of this divide is a fundamental disagreement about Obama’s strengths and weaknesses in his battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

“I’m not so concerned” about Wright’s comments, said Aliki Martin, of Bahama. A compliance officer at Duke University Medical Center, she was among 18,000 people who awaited Obama’s arrival late Monday night at the University of North Carolina’s basketball arena in Chapel Hill.

“I hope he keeps things positive,” she said.

Obama seemed to follow that advice in his 45-minute speech. “I know we’re being goaded into stuff,” he said, referring vaguely to disputes with Clinton and her supporters. “Don’t get distracted,” he told the crowd.

He gently mocked his critics: “They say, ‘We don’t know enough about him. He doesn’t always wear a flag pin. His pastor once said something. He’s got a funny name, sounds Muslim.’”

By Tuesday afternoon in Winston-Salem, Obama wasn’t laughing it off any more.

Wright’s comments — including the suggestion that the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus to destroy “people of color” — “end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate,” Obama told reporters, “and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.”

It was the kind of comment Tom Lipsky, a record company owner in Raleigh, expected to hear earlier.

“It bothers me that he would take his two daughters” to a church headed by “a man who says those kinds of things,” said Lipsky, who is white, as he waited to see Clinton Tuesday morning at North Carolina State University. Lipsky, 53, said he’s a committed Democrat, but is not sure he could vote for Obama if he becomes the nominee.

John Overton, of Chapel Hill, also attending the Clinton event, had similar misgivings. “I’m afraid of his radical connections,” which include Wright, the 39-year-old software developer said.

“I was the only white person” for about a year at a black church in Beaufort, Overton said. “I never heard anybody talk like that.”

In interview after interview, black and white Democrats seemed to talk past each other on the issue of religion and campaigns, even though all said they deeply dislike President Bush and want a change in Washington.

“Obama is not responsible for what his preacher says,” said Copeland Richard, of Knightdale, who attended the Chapel Hill rally. “As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t have to answer that,” said Richard, 66, who is black. “He’s above that, he’s dignified.”

The differences dismay many North Carolina Democratic officials, who saw the excitement over the Obama-Clinton contest as virtually unprecedented, possibly leading to huge gains for the party in November.

“I see a permanent fissure developing now” between black and white Democrats, said state Rep. Dan Blue, of Raleigh, who was North Carolina’s first black House speaker.

With the Wright controversy hot again, and former President Clinton recently saying Obama’s campaign “played the race card” against him, Blue said a great opportunity may turn to tragedy.

“I don’t know how you repair it,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

Source:news.yahoo

By JIM KUHNHENN and CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writers

MISHAWAKA, Ind. - A political tempest over Barack Obama’s comments about bitter voters in small towns has given rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a new opening to court working class Democrats 10 days before Pennsylvanians hold a primary that she must win to keep her presidential campaign alive.
Obama tried to quell the furor Saturday, explaining his remarks while also conceding he had chosen his words poorly.

“If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” Obama said in an interview with the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.

But the Clinton campaign fueled the controversy in every place and every way it could, hoping charges that Obama is elitist and arrogant will resonate with the swing voters the candidates are vying for not only in Pennsylvania, but in upcoming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina as well.

Political insiders differed on whether Obama’s comments, which came to light Friday, would become a full-blown political disaster that could prompt party leaders to try to steer the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has more pledged delegates. Clinton supporters were eagerly hoping so.

They handed out “I’m not bitter” stickers in North Carolina, and held a conference call of Pennsylvania mayors to denounce the Illinois senator. In Indiana, Clinton did the work herself, telling plant workers in Indianapolis that Obama’s comments were “elitist and out of touch.”

At issue are comments he made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The comments, posted Friday on The Huffington Post Web site, set off a blast of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials, and drew attention to a potential Obama weakness — the image some have that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and aloof.

His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage.

There has been a small “political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter,” Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. “They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.

“So I said, well you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.”

After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:

“The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That’s what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to.”

Clinton attacked Obama’s remarks much more harshly Saturday than she had the night before, calling them “demeaning.” Her aides feel Obama has given them a big opening, pulling the spotlight away from troublesome stories such as former President Clinton’s recent revisiting of his wife’s misstatements about an airport landing in Bosnia 10 years ago.

Obama is trying to focus attention narrowly on his remarks, arguing there’s no question that some working-class families are anxious and bitter. The Clinton campaign is parsing every word, focusing on what Obama said about religion, guns, immigration and trade.

Clinton hit all those themes in lengthy comments to manufacturing workers in Indianapolis.

“The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich,” she said.

“I also disagree with Senator Obama’s assertion that people in this country ‘cling to guns’ and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration,” Clinton added.

“People don’t need a president who looks down on them,” she said. “They need a president who stands up for them.”

McCain’s campaign piled on Obama, releasing a statement that also accused him of elitism.

One of Clinton’s staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama’s remarks. But he said Republicans would use them against him anyway.

At a campaign rally in Wilson, N.C., former state Democratic Party chairman and current Clinton adviser Tom Hendrickson said rural voters don’t need “liberal elites” telling them what to believe.

Bill Clinton was the featured speaker of the rally but avoided commenting on Obama’s remarks. When asked about it afterward, he said simply, “I agree with what Hillary said.”

___

Jim Kuhnhenn reported from Muncie, Ind. Associated Press writer Mike Baker in Wilson, N.C., contributed to this report.

Source:news.yahoo

MEDFORD, Ore. - Former President Clinton is using divisive tactics and unfairly trying to question Barack Obama’s patriotism, a retired general who has a prominent role in the Democrat’s campaign said Saturday.

Merrill “Tony” McPeak said he was astonished and disappointed by recent comments Bill Clinton made while speculating about a general election between Obama’s Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Republican John McCain.

Standing next to Obama on stage at a campaign stop in southern Oregon, the retired Air Force chief of staff repeated Bill Clinton’s comments aloud to a silent audience.

The former president told a group of veterans Friday in Charlotte, N.C.: “I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

McPeak, a co-chairman of Obama’s campaign, then said to his Oregon audience: “As one who for 37 years proudly wore the uniform of our country, I’m saddened to see a president employ these tactics. He of all people should know better because he was the target of exactly the same kind of tactics.”

That apparently was a reference to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, when he was accused of dodging the Vietnam War draft.

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, said Saturday that McPeak’s comments were a “deliberately pathetic misreading of what the president said.” Wolfson said the remarks had nothing to do with Obama and were merely meant to underscore the need to keep the presidential race focused on issues.

McPeak also had made off-the-cuff remarks to reporters Friday in comparing the former president’s comments with the actions of Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator.

“I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I’ve had enough of it,” McPeak said.

Wolfson called that comparison outrageous and called for a retraction.

“I think most Democrats were shocked to learn that a two-term Democratic president was compared to Joseph McCarthy,” he said.

McPeak was more scripted Saturday and joked that “occasionally I say something a little earthier.”

Last month, Obama’s wife, Michelle, drew criticism for telling an audience in Milwaukee, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

The campaign clarified those comments by saying she was proud of U.S. politics for the first time and has always been proud of her country.

Both Bill Clinton and McPeak have been criticized in the past for their campaign comments. Following South Carolina’s primary in January, Clinton was accused of fanning racial tensions for appearing to cast Obama as little more than a black candidate popular in a state with a heavily black electorate.

In February, McPeak was forced to retract his comment that Obama “doesn’t go on television and have crying fits” — a reference to Hillary Clinton’s show of emotion while campaigning in New Hampshire. The Obama campaign in February said those comments “crossed the line,” but it offered no retraction to McPeak’s latest comments.

Source:news.yahoo

MEDFORD, Ore. - Barack Obama refers to the past couple of weeks as a tough, turbulent stretch.
 
And why not?

His foreign policy adviser quit for calling Democratic presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a “monster.” Then he had to distance himself from his longtime pastor’s fiery statements, a controversy that threatened his image as a uniter. He trails in polls in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary. Obama also watched his lead wither in national opinion surveys.

“There’s no doubt we had a turbulent couple of weeks but we’ve had turbulent weeks in the past,” Obama told reporters Friday. “… It’s not going to be a smooth straight line. There’s times when the campaign is going well and there’s times the campaign is not going well.”

But as bad weeks go, things certainly could have been worse.

Obama received generally favorable reviews for his somber speech on the nation’s racial divide, though it didn’t completely silence the criticism over his former pastor’s rhetoric. Then Florida and Michigan indicated they would not hold new primaries to replace the contests that favored Clinton but violated party rules. Campaign finance reports showed him far ahead in the money race. And finally, he picked up the much sought-after endorsement of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson — one Clinton also had coveted.

Most importantly, as the Illinois senator prepares to takes a break from campaigning for a brief family vacation, he retains a nearly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates and is winning the nationwide popular vote.

With weeks to go before the next primary, imagery and perception matter.

It’s almost impossible for Clinton to catch Obama in the delegate count, but he can’t clinch the nomination through primaries alone. That leaves both candidates trying to woo superdelegates, the party leaders who can vote for whomever they choose.

Clinton’s campaign says Obama’s recent struggles prove she is the better candidate to face Republican John McCain in the general election. Setting aside the difficult delegate math, Clinton says the turbulence in Obama’s camp proves he hasn’t been vetted and would be vulnerable to Republican campaign tactics.

Obama’s campaign tells a different story. Supporters credit him for addressing the furor over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments head-on and for speaking from his heart. Obama’s bad week, supporters say, revealed him to be confident, cool under pressure, even presidential.

“We had a couple tough weeks and I assume that when I’m president there will be periods where we’re tested in these same kinds of ways,” Obama said.

Clinton has used similar themes to get through difficult patches in her own campaign. She has cast herself as a fighter, someone who has pressed through difficult times and is ready to lead when facing a problem as president.

“I think everybody here knows I’ve lived through some crises and some challenging moments in my life,” she said during a Democratic debate.

Not long ago, Clinton was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Then, after a series of defeats and a staff shake-up, her campaign appeared to be struggling. Now, Clinton is polling strong in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. Her campaign believes, when the races are over, it can make the case to superdelegates that she has momentum and deserves their support.

Source:news.yahoo

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Campaigning for his wife ahead of next month’s primary in this state, Bill Clinton was hardly subtle.

“I want you to run up her vote here in Pennsylvania,” he told hundreds of supporters last week at the Hotel Bethlehem, some of whom waited hours in the rain to see him.

Barack Obama leads in the delegate count, and his campaign continues to emphasize piling up delegates, but Hillary Clinton is attempting to create a new battleground in the presidential race: the popular-vote tally. It is the latest, and perhaps the last, hope for her to stop Obama, but the odds are stacked against her.

With an eye toward the superdelegates who will likely decide the nomination, the Clinton camp contends that the total popular vote in the primaries is key to deciding which Democrat can defeat Republican John McCain.

“If Hillary wins the popular vote but can’t quite catch up in the delegate vote, then you have to ask yourself which is more important and who’s more likely to win in November,” Bill Clinton told an ABC television interviewer last weekend.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Clinton backer, has said the popular vote count is more democratic, since a significant part of the delegate selection process is “undemocratic.” He was referring to caucuses, in which Clinton has performed poorly against Obama’s superior organization.

The Clinton arguments aim at Democratic superdelegates, since neither candidate can win enough delegates in the primaries to gain a majority. Enough superdelegates remain uncommitted to tip the matter either way.

Democratic strategist Steve Murphy said the Clinton campaign is “like a lawyer with a losing case. You file every motion imaginable and hope to hit pay dirt.”

Obama appears to have weathered an uproar over his relationship with a controversial pastor. After delivering a highly publicized speech about race and winning New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s endorsement, he has edged back ahead of Clinton, according to a new Gallup national tracking poll released yesterday.

Obama has a mathematically insurmountable lead in delegates earned during the primary season, thanks to party rules that allot nearly as many delegates to the loser in a two-way contest. He also has a popular-vote lead of more than 700,000.

For Clinton to move ahead in popular votes, she would have to clobber him in the remaining primaries — running up landslide margins that would signal to insiders that Obama’s candidacy had effectively collapsed.

Pressing her new strategy last week, Bill Clinton told a Wilkes-Barre, Pa., crowd: “It’s all come down to you. You can put her ahead in the popular vote. You can put her on the road to victory.” Those words echoed his remark at a campaign event in Texas last month that caused more than a little discomfort for his wife’s strategists.

The former president, playing a sometimes unwelcome role in setting the bar for his wife’s performance, told a Texas audience: “If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be. It’s all on you.”

In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries, her strategists tried to wriggle out of that prediction, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton needed to win only one state to keep her candidacy alive; in the end, she swept both primaries (though Obama apparently picked up more delegates in the Texas caucuses).

Pennsylvania is the next must-win state for Clinton, but her husband has effectively set another bar that she may have more difficulty clearing: Unless she gains the overall edge in popular votes, he indicated, it would be hard for the party to deny Obama the nomination.

“If Senator Obama wins the popular vote, then the choice would be easier,” Mr. Clinton said in the ABC interview.

Hillary Clinton responded curtly when asked last week whether the nomination race was a contest for delegates or popular votes. “I think it’s a question about everything, and I think people are going to have to take everything into account,” she said.

For months, the Obama camp has said the nomination fight is about winning delegates, though it has sought to focus attention on the number of states won, too.

“What’s clear is that Senator Obama is winning in pledged delegates, states won, and the popular vote,” said Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Clinton’s popular-vote strategy was dealt a setback last week with the collapse of efforts to stage new primaries in Michigan and Florida. Without those states, it could be nearly impossible for her to gain the popular vote lead.

SOurce:baltimoresun

LITHONIA, GA. — How do we start a national dialogue on race?

Charlotte Griffin was at a restaurant one evening when a white woman complimented her on her children’s behavior. The stranger may have meant to be kind. But Griffin wondered if she heard a note of condescension — an assumption, perhaps, that black kids aren’t usually so polite.

How do we navigate that minefield?

As a teenager, Stan North went to work on the assembly line at Ford. He made good money. But he noticed that he — like all the other white guys — always got the dirty jobs. Seething, he concluded that the boss wouldn’t dare give a black man heavy lifting, for fear of being tagged a racist.

How do we acknowledge that anger?

In his recent address on race relations in America — prompted by his minister’s explosive sermons on that topic — Sen. Barack Obama declared that whites must understand the black experience in America and blacks must appreciate the white perspective. Otherwise, he said, we face a grinding “racial stalemate.”

His remarks struck a nerve: More than 4 million people watched the Democratic presidential candidate on live TV, and the speech is now a top video on YouTube, viewed nearly 3 million times.

Preachers and teachers across the country have been trying to figure out how to leverage that interest to launch deep, authentic discussions about race. In some quarters, there’s strong interest.

“This is a very good time to put everything on the table,” said Abdullah Robinson, 64, a black man who lives in suburban Atlanta. “We don’t know nothing about each other, and we’ve been living together for hundreds of years.”

But others don’t want any part of a dialogue that starts from the premise that there is a black America and a white America. They don’t want to hear about victims and oppressors. It’s past time, they say, to move on.

Blacks “bring up the enslavement card way too much,” said JoAnna Cullinane-Halda, 64, who just opened a home decor boutique in rural Colorado. “I’m Irish. My people were enslaved as well. But it’s far enough in our dark past. We’ve gone beyond that. Let it go.”

The complexities of opening a dialogue on race were evident after a day of long conversations with African Americans in Lithonia, Ga., a suburban haven for black professionals outside Atlanta, and with whites in Franktown, Colo., a working-class town in the hills southeast of Denver.

Carmen Van Kerckhove, co-founder of a diversity consulting firm in New York, described the dynamic this way: “Human beings tend to be really focused on their own oppression, and tend to be less interested in hearing about the oppression of others.”

Old resentments

North, 50, grew up in integrated Detroit. He went to school with black friends. He played ball with them, swam with them. Every now and then, fists would fly over a racial insult. Then they’d all go back to hanging out together.

As far as North was concerned, everyone was equal. If anything, he said, blacks were better off because affirmative action gave them a boost into college. His own grades weren’t good enough for a scholarship; he ended up building engines at Ford.

A few years in, he tried to get shifted off the heavy jobs — but his boss, he said, dismissed him with a curt: “You’re a white boy. What’re you crying about?” North looked around. He noticed that when minorities complained, “they got moved to a different job, because [the supervisors] were afraid of the race card.”

Now North has a good job repairing tractors and trailers in Franktown. But when he reflects on his days at Ford, he feels the old resentment.

“I kept hearing: ‘Minority this, minority that. Blacks aren’t getting this, blacks aren’t getting that.’ I’m disgusted with it,” he said. “OK, fine, they’ve gotten stepped on for 400 years. Let’s give them something [to make up for it] and be done with it, the way we did with the Indians.”

He’s had enough, he said, of identity politics: “If you’re born here, you’re an American. Period. Act like an American.” A fellow mechanic began listing racial and ethnic groups: African American, Hispanic American, Chinese American.

Source:latimes

ISLAMABAD, March 22: The Pakistan People’s Party on Saturday named Makhdoom Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani for election as the country’s next prime minister to head a landmark coalition of former political rivals, ending weeks of suspense on a day of high political drama that also saw some old friendships being punctured and a new one initiated.

Wiles and guiles of politics were in full play in Islamabad before a statement from PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari announced the choice he said he had made through consultations within the party and with coalition partners, dumping the other most prominent hopeful, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.

The nominee of the PPP, which emerged as the largest parliamentary group in the Feb 18 election, will be the coalition’s joint candidate whose election by the National Assembly for a five-year term, set for Monday, is a foregone conclusion because of the expected support by more than two-thirds majority in the 342-seat lower house.

Mr Fahim, a senior vice-chairman of the PPP, like Mr Gilani, and president of the party’s electoral arm of PPP Parliamentarians, immediately accepted the nomination despite strongly pressing his candidacy publicly in the past, and told the media by telephone from Karachi that he would arrive in Islamabad on Sunday “only, only and only” to vote for Mr Gilani on Monday.

The nomination was earlier due to have been announced by PPP boy chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who, according to party officials, had come home during a studies break in Britain only for this purpose.

But in an apparent last-minute change of plans amid murmurs about the wisdom of involving the 19-year-old undergraduate in a controversy and to announce a choice he was not expected to make, the task was left to a statement from Mr Zardari that was read out to the media by party spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

However, the statement spoke of consultations having been held with Bilawal as with other coalition partners and unspecified party members and made no mention of Mr Fahim, whose candidacy had fed rumour mills for weeks after media reports that Mr Zardari and main ally PML-N had developed some reservations about the PPP’s most senior parliamentarian because of his past contacts with President Pervez Musharraf.

Though Mr Zardari never spoke about the matter publicly, Mr Fahim had reacted to a statement by PML-N MNA Khwaja Mohammad Asif by stating recently that he had such contacts during the lifetime of assassinated party leader Benazir Bhutto on her directives and Mr Zardari was aware of those made afterwards.

While the PPP prepared for the announcement of its prime ministerial candidate, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) stunned the opposition alliance by withdrawing its member Farooq Sattar as joint opposition candidate for the office to give an unconditional support of its 25 National Assembly members to the PPP nominee.

The sudden move left the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League and its allies with no option but to look for an alternative.

Political observers were intrigued by the sudden MQM’s withdrawal from the race, which set off speculations about a possible role of President Pervez Musharraf because of his perceived sympathies for the party. The move came after a reported telephonic contact between Mr Zardari and MQM’s self-exiled leader Altaf Hussain.

Strangely, leaders of both the MQM and PML said they would remain together in opposition though one of them will vote for the PPP candidate.

Some political sources speculated that peace with MQM could help the PPP overcome any problems in its main power base of Sindh province due to the rejection of Mr Fahim’s candidacy or to neutralise any future challenge from any other coalition partner at the centre.

Mr Zardari said in his statement that a “consensus has been achieved” in nominating Mr Gilani after completion of consultations within the PPP, with coalition partners and with Mr Bilawal Bhutto.

“I have great pleasure in calling upon Makhdoom Yusuf Raza Gilani in the name of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto to accept the heavy responsibility and lead the coalition government and the nation to greater heights and a glorious future,” the statement said and added: “Makhdoom Yusuf Raza Gilani is not afraid to lead and he knows the way.”

The PPP co-chairman said his “thoughts and prayers” were with Mr Gilani, the coalition government and the people of Pakistan and that he wished them “all success in the challenges that lie ahead”.

He further said: “On this occasion my thoughts go to Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto who led from the front the fight for democracy and laid down her life. I also recall the sacrifices of those countless martyrs who valiantly fought along with her throughout the years and died for the cause. Their sacrifices have illumined the path that will be traversed by the generations to come.”

Source:dawn

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The party of Benazir Bhutto said Friday it would name its choice for prime minister this weekend before a vote by lawmakers to decide who will lead Pakistan’s next government.

The decision on who to nominate for Monday’s vote falls to Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, which routed allies of President Pervez Musharraf to win the most seats in last month’s elections.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Friday that Ms. Bhutto’s widower and teenage son would make an announcement soon. Ms. Bhutto’s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was appointed party chairman after his mother was killed in a December suicide attack, but his father is running things while the 19-year-old continues his studies at Oxford University.

Ms. Bhutto’s son flew to Pakistan Wednesday, and is expected to make the premiership announcement alongside his father, Asif Ali Zardari. “The name of our candidate for prime minister will be announced on either Saturday or Sunday morning,” Mr. Babar said.

After confirmation by Parliament, the new prime minister will take an oath from Mr. Musharraf on Tuesday, said presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi.

Aristocratic party stalwart Makhdoom Amin Fahim has long been considered the front-runner for prime minister. As PPP vice chairman, he led Ms. Bhutto’s followers in Parliament during her nearly eight-year exile from Pakistan. But the party has stalled on nominating Mr. Fahim amid speculation that the elder Mr. Zardari wants the job. Mr. Zardari is currently ineligible because he does not hold a parliamentary seat. However, he could appoint a stand-in and run for a seat in a by-election within months. The battle for prime minister has strained party unity.

On Friday, Mr. Musharraf’s party accused the parties of Ms. Bhutto and former premier Nawaz Sharif of trying to “buy the political loyalty” of its members. “This is not good for democracy,” Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, a top ally of Mr. Musharraf, told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.

Meanwhile, Pakistani lawmaker Lawmaker Haider Abbas Rizvi said allies of Mr. Musharraf are withdrawing their candidate for prime minister as a “good will gesture.” They had nominated Farooq Sattar earlier this week, but the nomination was largely symbolic since they do not hold a majority in parliament.

SOurce:online.ws

PARIS - Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain said Friday that China is harming its world image with its crackdown in Tibet and expressed hope Beijing would seek a peaceful solution to the crisis.

McCain did not discuss the issue during a 45-minute meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but told reporters later the subject was “one of the first things I would talk about if I were president of the United States today.”

China’s crackdown “is not correct,” McCain said in the courtyard of the French presidential Elysee Palace.

“The people there are being subjected to mistreatment that is not acceptable with the conduct of a world power, which China is,” McCain said in response to a question by a Chinese television journalist.

“There must be respect for human rights, and I would hope that the Chinese are actively seeking a peaceful resolution to this situation that exists which harms not only the human rights of the people there but also the image of China in the world.”

The White House has urged Beijing to respect Tibetan culture and multi-ethnicity in its society.

McCain was in Paris for a matter of hours at the end of a weeklong tour of the Middle East and Europe. He was traveling as part of a U.S. congressional delegation — including Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — that visited Iraq, Jordan, Israel and London.

The delegation discussed a range of issues with Sarkozy, from climate warming and nuclear energy to the Middle East crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan, where France has troops.

McCain praised the state of U.S. relations with France, crediting Sarkozy, who was elected in May, with the high level of ties after years of tension that followed Paris’ lead role in opposing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago.

“I think our relations with France will improve no matter who is the president of the United States,” he said, “because this president (Sarkozy) is committed to greater cooperation and values our friendship.”

A reporter asked if McCain’s trip abroad was not a “taxpayer rip-off,” used for personal politicking, forcing the Arizona senator to defend the trip. He said he was proud.

Travels to Iraq or Israel and meetings in Europe concern issues that “lay clearly under the jurisdiction of the Senate Armed Services Committee,” McCain said.

“Very frankly, I wish every senator … would take the same trip that we have taken. They would be better informed and they would be better able to make decisions as to how we can defend the national interests of the United States of America in these times of great challenge,” he said.

The McCain campaign said Thursday it would reimburse the federal government about $3,000 for political travel expenses incurred during the trip.

On Thursday, McCain attended a $1,000-per-person fundraising lunch at London’s Spencer House.

Under terms reviewed by the Federal Election Commission and the Senate ethics committee, McCain will reimburse the federal government $3,000 for a one-night stay at a London hotel and first-class airfare from Washington to London because of the political nature of the event there. McCain had already agreed to pay more than $2,000 for the flight home.

McCain expressed special thanks to Sarkozy and the “the brave citizens of this country” for their troop contribution to Afghanistan where France has some 1,500 soldiers as part of the NATO mission there and another 400 in the U.S.-led operation battling the Taliban and al-Qaida.

McCain reiterated his commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, saying “we must make progress, we can make progress” and adding that he believes any participation of France and other countries can contribute to peace. The role of France in pressing Iran over its disputed nuclear program has been important, he said.

France pressed for the recent third round of sanctions passed by the U.N. Security Council on Iran for failing to end its disputed nuclear program and assuage fears uranium enrichment may be used to develop nuclear weapons — which Iran denies.

A nuclear armed Iran “is a threat to the entire region and peace in the world,” McCain said.

Sarkozy is expected to announce next month a new force commitment to Afghanistan.
 
Source:news.yahoo

WASHINGTON - Two companies that provide workers for the State Department say they fired or otherwise punished those who improperly accessed the passport records of the three major presidential candidates. The security breaches touched off demands for a congressional investigation.
“None of us wants to have a circumstance in which any American’s passport file is looked at in an unauthorized way,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she offered apologies to the candidates.

Stanley Inc., based in Arlington, Va., and The Analysis Corp., or TAC, of McLean, Va., said Friday that their employees’ actions were unauthorized and not consistent with company policies.

Stanley said it fired two subcontractors involved in accessing the files of Sen. Barack Obama when their actions were discovered. A separate search showed that workers also had snooped on Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

TAC said it had been notified earlier in the day that one of its contractors had acted improperly — in this case, according to the State Department, by accessing Obama’s records. TAC decided to honor a State Department request to delay firing the consultant to give investigators time to conduct its investigation, the company said.

A fourth worker tapped into Clinton’s records as part of a training session last summer, the State Department said, and that violation was immediately recognized and the person admonished.

“When you have not just one but a series of attempts to tap into people’s personal records, that’s a problem not just for me but for how our government functions,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Portland, Ore. “I expect a full and thorough investigation. It should be done in conjunction with those congressional committees that have oversight function so it’s not simply an internal matter.”

McCain, who is expected to win the Republican nomination, said from Paris that there should be an investigation of the new snooping as well as an apology.

Rice contacted the candidates to do just that. “I told him that I was sorry,” she said of her conversation with Obama, “and I told him that I, myself, would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file. And, therefore, I will stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it.”

The snooping incidents raised questions as to whether there was political motivation. The firings could make it more difficult for the State Department to force them to answer questions. Unless they agree to comply, they would have to be served with a grand jury subpoena compelling them to testify before a grand jury.

The State Department’s inspector general was probing, with the Justice Department monitoring the effort.

The unauthorized digging into electronic government files on politicians recalled a 1992 case in which a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted for searching Bill Clinton’s passport records when Clinton was running against President George H.W. Bush.

Obama’s files were compromised on three occasions — Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. By the time senior officials were made aware, the two contract employees for Stanley had been fired and a TAC employee was disciplined, officials said.

Just this week, Stanley won a five-year, $570 million government contract extension to support passport services.

The department’s internal computer system “flags” certain records, including those of high-profile people, to tip off supervisors when someone tries to view the records without an appropriate reason.

McCormack said an early review of the incidents points to workers’ “imprudent curiosity” more than something more sinister.

But “we are not dismissive of any other possibility, and that’s the reason why we have an investigation under way,” he said.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the case has not yet been referred to the Justice Department for investigation, and indicated prosecutors were likely to wait until the State Department’s inspector general concludes that inquiry. But Mukasey did not rule out the possibility of the Justice Department taking an independent look.

It was not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when someone fills out a passport application.

The file also includes date and place of birth and address at time of application. Agency officials said the files generally would not list countries the person has traveled to.

___

AP Business Writer Dan Caterinicchia contributed to this report.

Source:news.yahoo