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WASHINGTON - JUST when Mr Barack Obama is struggling to win over white voters worried about the economy, public appearances by his former pastor are whipping up a tempest over race, patriotism and religion that the Democratic presidential front runner had hoped he had quashed.
At an appearance before the National Press Club on Monday, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright delivered a defiant address in which he defended and amplified some politically and racially charged remarks from past sermons.
The speech was the third nationally televised appearance he had made since last Friday in what Democratic strategists described as an unwelcome distraction for an Obama campaign that would prefer to see him fade from the scene.
During question time, the Rev Wright declined to retract a statement from a post-9/11 sermon that 'America's chickens are coming home to roost'.
'You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you,' he said. 'Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.'
Asked about his prior suggestion that the government created Aids to harm black people, he shot back that 'I believe our government is capable of doing anything'.
He also praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, long criticised for making anti-Semitic comments, as 'one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries'.
The Rev Wright, who said he has embarked on a week-long media blitz to defend the honour of the 'black church', shrugged off Mr Obama's speech last month criticising him as divisive and out of touch.
'Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability...I am not running for office, but I am open to being vice-president,' he said as the crowd laughed.
Independent political analyst Stu Rothenberg said of the Rev Wright's 90-minute appearance: 'I do not know why he is doing this to his friend...he is seriously hurting Obama.'
The Rev Wright had kept a low public profile since portions of his sermons were broadcast on TV last month.
The Obama campaign said it had no role in the Rev Wright's emergence in public. Mr Obama further distanced himself from the man on Monday, saying he considered him to be his 'former pastor'.
Mr Obama, a long-time member of the Rev Wright's church in Chicago, partially quelled the controversy with a speech on race in Philadelphia last month.
But Republicans already use the pastor's comments in advertisements against Mr Obama, who is facing new scrutiny from Democratic leaders after failing to win white, blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
In another setback, an Associated Press poll released on Monday showed his rival Hillary Clinton as a stronger contender against Mr John McCain, beating him by 9 percentage points, while Mr Obama essentially was tied in a match-up with the presumed Republican nominee.
LOS ANGELES TIMES-WASHINGTON POST
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