US: Senator John Kerry said yesterday some foreign leaders had encouraged his effort to defeat US President George Bush in November's presidential election - a remark which could rebound against the Democratic challenger.
"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," Mr Kerry told fundraisers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida without naming the leaders.
The comment was criticised by Republican commentators as evidence that Mr Kerry was an agent of foreign governments such as France which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, and was in effect doing their bidding.
President Bush yesterday launched a blistering attack on Senator Kerry, accusing him of seeking to undermine American intelligence.
"In 1955, two years after the attack on the World Trade centre, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the intelligence budget by one and a half billion dollars," Mr Bush told a fund-raiser in Dallas. That was "so deeply irresponsible he didn't get a single co-sponsor in Congress". "Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways," Mr Bush said, in a rare mention of his rival by name. "He's for good intelligence, and yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services, and that is no way to lead in a time of war."
The accusation - based on a call by Mr Kerry to cut intelligence spending following the collapse of the Soviet Union - is part of a re-election strategy to depict Mr Kerry as weak on national security, and to counter Kerry campaign attacks on Mr Bush over his foreign policy and especially Iraq.
The Massachusetts senator was in Florida as part of a swing through four states, Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, ahead of today's Democratic primaries, in which Mr Kerry is running virtually unopposed.
He predicted a tough eight-month campaign in which Republicans would make an effort to malign him and his wife, Teresa.
"It's going to be hard fought. They're going to do everything possible to tear down my character personally, and Teresa. That's the way they operate," he said.