Obama dismisses criticism over foreign language comments

Washington: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was under fire from conservatives for suggesting that American children should learn a foreign language.

Meanwhile, his Republican rival John McCain was reaching out to women voters.

Obama, speaking at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday, batted away conservative criticism over a comment he made about Americans' lack of foreign language skills.

"The Republicans jumped on this. I said, absolutely, immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages," the likely Democratic nominee said as the 1,000-plus crowd in a school gymnasium cheered. It is a position he has long held.

"This is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth, which is: We should want our children with more knowledge. We should want our children to have more skills. There's nothing wrong with that."

At issue was a remark the Illinois senator made Tuesday in Georgia that drew laughter from the crowd - but disdain from conservatives and groups advocating English as the official US language.

Obama was answering a question on education when he said he does not understand people who say the US needs English only.

"I agree that immigrants should learn English," Obama said. "But instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language."

On Friday, McCain was speaking to a mostly female audience, a day after Obama teamed up with his former rival Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to speak to women voters.

McCain told several hundred women in western Wisconsin that his tax cut plans would be particularly helpful to women because so many of them own or work for small businesses.

"Yesterday in New York, Senator Obama went on at great length about how much he cares about women's issues," McCain said at a town-hall forum in Hudson, where women vastly outnumbered men.

"I believe him. But when you cut through all the smooth rhetoric, Senator Obama's policies would make it harder for women to start new businesses, harder for women to create or find new jobs, harder for women to manage the family budget, and harder for women and their families to meet their tax burden."

Obama's campaign disputed the claims.