HILLARY Clinton has been accused of exaggerating her foreign policy credentials after her claim that she once landed in Bosnia under sniper fire was retracted as a "misstatement".
During a speech about Iraq last week, the Democratic presidential hopeful said of the March 1996 trip: "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."
According to reports at the time, Mrs Clinton was put at no extraordinary risk on that trip, while one of her companions said he had no recollection of the threat, or reality, of gunfire.
With her Democratic rival Barack Obama on holiday, it was left to members of his camp to score a point against Mrs Clinton. A spokesman said her story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policy-making".
The Obama campaign statement carried internet links to a news video taken on the Bosnia trip and posted on YouTube. It showed Mrs Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, walking across the tarmac from a large cargo plane, smiling and waving, and stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and greet an eight-year-old girl.
When asked on Monday about the New York senator's recounting of those events, Mrs Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, recalled her book Living History, in which she described a shortened welcoming ceremony at Tuzla air base in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the air strip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find," she wrote.
Mr Wolfson said: "That is what she wrote in her book. That is what she has said many, many times, and on one occasion she misspoke."
Asked about the issue on Monday, Mrs Clinton also said she "misspoke".
The former first lady often cites the goodwill trip she took with her daughter and several celebrities as a part of her foreign policy experience, which she claims gives her an advantage over Mr Obama.
His campaign team yesterday announced a six-day "Road to Change" bus tour across Pennsylvania, which holds the next presidential primary contest on 22 April and where the polls show Mrs Clinton with a substantial lead. The tour begins on Friday.
Mr Obama leads the overall delegate count, with 1,620 to Mrs Clinton's 1,499. But neither candidate is likely to get enough delegates in the remaining primaries and caucuses to reach the 2,024 needed to win nomination at the party's convention in late August in Denver.
That means they must rely on support from superdelegates – party officials and elected leaders who are free to vote for any candidate – to become the Democratic nominee.
The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, meanwhile called on American banks to help their customers in the same way as they have been helped by the US government.
Mr McCain, 71, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and Arizona senator – who has admitted that the economy is not his strong point – said the banks should be passing on to their customers the benefits of heavy doses of federal assistance.
The full article contains 586 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
