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US row as Kerry claims foreign leaders' support

This article is more than 20 years old

The Democrats' US presidential candidate, John Kerry, yesterday caused political uproar by claiming he had the private support of foreign leaders who wanted President George Bush beaten.

Speaking to supporters in Florida, the Massachusetts senator declared: "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy.' Things like that."

The remarks provoked an instant rebuke from Mr Bush's re-election campaign.

"Kerry's foreign friends may prefer him as US president, but the election is in the hands of the American people," Terry Holt, a campaign spokesman, said.

Mr Kerry's claims risked playing into the hands of the Bush camp, which has privately sought to portray Mr Kerry as more at home with foreigners than with ordinary Americans. A White House official once told the New York Times that one of the Democrat's drawbacks was that "he looks French".

The exchange came at the start of the Bush-Kerry contest that took off in the wake of Mr Kerry's victory in the Democratic primaries last week.

Mr Kerry has spent much of the past few months lambasting the president's record, and the Bush campaign, with more than $150m (£84m) in funds, has begun focusing its fire on him. Senior Republicans appeared on television talk shows yesterday, depicting the Massachusetts senator as a vacillating liberal.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said Mr Kerry "seems to be in honest confusion about what his position is" on the war on terror.

The debate has so far dealt principally with policy but, against the background of a deeply polarised nation, many analysts and politicians are predicting the battle will turn personal soon.

"I think this is going to be probably the nastiest campaign we've ever seen from both sides because of the polarisation that exists in politics today," John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, said on ABC television over the weekend.

His attempt to win the Republican nomination in 2000 was the target of personal attacks spread by anonymous pro-Bush activists.

"It's going to be hard-fought," Mr Kerry said yesterday. He added that the Republicans would do anything to "tear down my character" and that of his wife, Teresa.

With eight months to go before the election, a poll commissioned by National Public Radio asking Americans to rate their interest on a range from one to 10 showed 63% described themselves as a 10.

In a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released yesterday Kerry and Bush tied, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 5%, among registered voters. Kerry was slightly ahead 50-45 when only he and Bush were included in the question.

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