McCain blasts Democrats' Iraq stand

Washington: John McCain, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has accused his Democratic rivals of supporting policies which would lead to genocide in Iraq.

He criticised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have said they would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in their first months in the power.

"Both Senator Obama and Clinton want to set a date for withdrawal. That means chaos. That means genocide," the 71-year-old Arizona senator told CNN.

"That means undoing all the success we've achieved, and Al Qaida tells the world they defeated the United States of America. I won't let that happen, as president of the United States." McCain's remarks drew his battle lines for the forthcoming contest.

He wants to make national security the dominant issue of November's election, as it was in President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.

A Vietnam War hero, he will stake his credibility as a leader on having supported the counter-insurgency "surge" of US troops in Iraq when the conflict was at its most unpopular, only to see it work.

"Neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton had any experience of knowledge to know that this surge would succeed," he said in the interview.

Republican party sources said Bush will officially endorse the senator tomorrow. The president has already issued a de facto endorsement, describing McCain as a "true conservative", in an attempt to boost his standing among Right-wingers suspicious of McCain's history of co-operating with Democrats in Congress.

Hectic jockeying

• Hillary Clinton declared herself the candidate of middle class Americans as she struggled to hold off a hard-charging Barack Obama in upcoming Democratic contests in the industrial heartland that could determine the fate of her presidential campaign.
• But it was Obama who collected a key labour union endorsement on Friday, at the same time he criticised his rival for supporting legislation harmful to workers such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• In the Republican race, John McCain, the party's presumptive nominee, was to receive an endorsement from former President George H.W. Bush tomorrow, Republican officials said.
• The former president's endorsement, which follows one from ex-Florida Governor Jeb Bush, is a further nudge for conservative activists to get over their distaste for McCain, and for Mike Huckabee to quit.
• Since he took a commanding lead in the delegate count, McCain has been working to solidify his support from a Republican base unhappy with his unorthodox positions.