US Elections:HILLARY CLINTON has been forced to admit that she exaggerated claims of coming under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia in the 1990s after video footage showed the then first lady walking calmly from her aircraft, writes Ewen MacAskillin Washington.
The Clinton campaign played down the episode as a "misstatement" and a "minor blip". However it was seized on by supporters of her rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, as further evidence of Mrs Clinton inflating her foreign policy experience during her time in the White House.
The row centres on a comment she made during a campaign stop in Washington DC last week.
Keen to talk up her experience, she spoke vividly about a harrowing and dangerous trip she made in March 1996 to Tuzla airport in Bosnia.
"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base," she said. However, reporters and others accompanying Mrs Clinton recalled the landing at Tuzla as being routine.
On Monday night, after days of argument, CBS settled the matter, unearthing film confirming there had been no sniper fire.
The outcome was a rare retreat by Mrs Clinton, the first time since she began campaigning more than a year ago that she has publicly admitted making a mistake.
The row is the latest in almost daily personal exchanges between the Clinton and Obama camps. The Obama campaign team said her account of Tuzla was part of a pattern in which she exaggerated her foreign and domestic policy experience.
It comes soon after questions were raised about her claim to have played a pivotal part in the Northern Ireland peace process.
With the race slipping away from Mrs Clinton, her team has redoubled its efforts, with its researchers scouring Mr Obama's background.
The Obama team, smarting from his failure to finish Clinton off in the Ohio and Texas contests on March 3rd, has pressed ahead with the negative campaigning it once claimed to abhor.
The comedian Sinbad took issue with her version of the Tuzla trip. He was with her to entertain US troops at the airbase. Sinbad, an Obama supporter, in an interview with the Washington Post, said the biggest concern facing them in Tuzla was "do we eat here or at the next place?" - (Guardian service)