Obama keen to distance from pastor's controversial comments

|PIC1|US presidential candidate Barack Obama will use a speech on Tuesday to distance himself from inflammatory race comments from his former pastor.

Rev Jeremiah Wright, who was a pastor of Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago until his retirement last month, caused uproar for asserting in a number of widely circulated sermons that US foreign policy led to the September 11 attacks and that the US Government is behind the Aids virus. Rev Wright has also been forceful in accusing the US Government and "Great White West" of ignoring the concerns of black citizens.

Obama, who would become the first black US president, said in an interview on the PBS programme "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" that the row over his former pastor's rhetoric threatened to cast a shadow over his message of leaving behind racial divisions.

"I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign. I think part of what has always been the essence of my politics, not just this campaign, but my life is the idea that we've got to bring people together," said Obama, who is the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya.

Last week, Obama denounced Wright's comments saying that he would have left Trinity, his church for the last 20 years, had such sermons been "the repeated tenor of the church...I wouldn't feel comfortable there."

Writing in the Huffington Post, he said, "Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.

"I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit.

"In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev Wright that are at issue."

The battle between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination has been tarnished by flare-ups over race, with both camps accusing the other of injecting race into the campaign.

Last week, Clinton supporter and 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, said Obama's lead in the Democratic race was down to his being black.

Bill Clinton found himself in hot water in January when he compared Obama's South Carolina win to similar victories enjoyed by black civil rights campaigner Rev Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Critics accused Bill Clinton of trying to push Obama to the margins by re-fashioning him as a candidate with only black appeal.

In an interview with an MTV college station in New Orleans, Bill Clinton denied engaging in racial politics in South Carolina. "I went through South Carolina and never said a bad word about Senator Obama - not one," he said.

Obama has made clear, meanwhile, that he will not sever ties with the 6,000-member Trinity and that he still respects Wright, likening him to an "old uncle". He also states that he never heard the sermons in which the pastor made his controversial assertions.

"Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life," he wrote on the Huffington Post. "And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor and to seek justice at every turn.

"With Reverend Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev Otis Moss III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good," he wrote.