WASHINGTON —

Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday revived the row over the fiery racial rhetoric of Barack Obama’s former pastor, saying she, unlike her White House rival, would have left his church.

Clinton’s decision to reignite the controversy came as she battled to shrug off her own embarrassment, after admitting that her claims that she dodged sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 as first lady were untrue.

“I made a mistake, that happens. It proves I’m human, which, for some people, is a revelation,” Clinton said, in a news conference in Pennsylvania in which she pointedly discussed Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

“I think, given all we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor,” the New York senator said.

“We don’t have a choice when it comes to our relatives. We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the church we attend.”

Videos emerged this month of Wright assailing U.S. and Israeli “terrorism,” calling on African-Americans to sing “God damn America” over racial prejudice, and alleging the U.S. government spread AIDS among the community.

The furor prompted Obama to give a landmark speech on racial reconciliation last week which appeared to quiet the storm.

But Republican commentators denounced him for refusing to disown Wright, and the drama, which some analysts say could hurt Obama with working-class white voters, looks set to be a general election issue if he wins the nomination.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton accused Clinton of bringing up the race row, to cloud her own embarrassment.

“After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia,” he said.

“The truth is, Barack Obama has already spoken out against his pastor’s offensive comments and addressed the issue of race in America with a deeply personal and uncommonly honest speech.”

The latest rows to rock the Democratic race came as Clinton campaigned hard in Pennsylvania, venue for the next nominating clash on April 22.

Her attempts to chase down front-runner Obama were complicated by the Bosnia furor, which her rival’s aides have framed as an example of her dishonestly overstating her foreign policy experience.

“This has been a very long campaign,” a laughing Clinton said in an interview with Pittsburgh radio station KDKA. “I did misspeak the other day.”

Obama aides quickly pointed to at least four other occasions stretching back to December when she had recalled coming under fire when she landed at Tuzla airbase on March 25, 1996.

Television footage from the trip showed Clinton being greeted by smiling officials on the tarmac as she got off a U.S. military plane.

Obama stayed out of view for another day, before bounding back onto the campaign trail on Wednesday, after a short Easter break with his family in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Meanwhile, Senator John McCain, who has already clinched the Republican presidential nomination, attempted to bolster his economic credentials and debunk Democratic claims he knows little about finance, with a speech on the mortgage crisis.

“Any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t,” McCain said, signaling reticence over large-scale government assistance to alleviate the crisis.

“I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis,” the Arizona senator told Hispanic business leaders in California.

But he also appeared to attempt to separate himself from President George W Bush, who has been accused by Democrats of obstinately refusing to intervene to rescue the stuttering economy.

“In this crisis, as in all I may face in the future, I will not allow dogma to override common sense,” he said.

McCain was set to get another boost as he strives to solidify shaky links with the right of his party, by later Tuesday securing the endorsement of Nancy Reagan, first lady to the late conservative hero Ronald Reagan.

Wire reports

6 Comments

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  SezWho2 at 10:54 AM JST - 26th March

  Hillary has no conception of what she would have done were she in Obama's position precisely because she has no conception of what it is like to be in his position.

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  BeatlesFan at 11:56 AM JST - 26th March

  Hate to see my party in such turmoil. It's almost like they are looking for ways to lose the presidential election.

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  adaydream at 01:24 PM JST - 26th March

  Well Beatlesfan, it's actually very civil. I mean Hillary didn't dig this dirt up. But it's pretty correct.

  I guess I could understand staying in a church that the preacher preached the kind of love and goodness that I wanted to hear.

  So I can only assume that Barack Obama agreed with the Rev Wright.

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  BeatlesFan at 01:39 PM JST - 26th March

  adaydream, it seems strange that Clinton is concentrating on the race issue. She should be working on showing that Obama stands for nothing.

  In his short time in the U.S. Senate, he voted present 131 times. 131 times when he could have defined himself he decided to sit on his hands.

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  RomeoRamen2 at 01:56 PM JST - 26th March

  “I did misspeak the other day.”

  She's a clinton. "Misspeaking" is clintonese for bold-faced lying.

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  SezWho2 at 05:16 PM JST - 26th March

  adaydream, I think it makes at least as much sense--if not more--that Wright agrees with Obama.

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