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CHICAGO - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Tuesday if elected president he would pursue a global ban on nuclear weapons as he sought to pick up ground on his front-running rival, Hillary Clinton.
"Here's what I'll say as president: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons," Obama said.
Obama marked the five-year anniversary of a speech he gave as a US Senate candidate outlining his opposition to the Iraq war, noting it came just 10 days before his top rival for the US-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global," Obama said.
The first-term senator from Illinois said critics - actually it was Clinton - called him "naive and irresponsible" when he said he would negotiate with the leaders of hostile nations like Iran and Cuba.
And he said he was "lectured" for saying he would launch an attack on Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. And it was called a "gaffe" when he ruled out using nuclear weapons on terrorist training camps.
On each, he defended his stance.
"We're not going to be safe in a world of unconventional threats with the same old conventional thinking that got us into Iraq," he said.
In a Democratic debate in New Hampshire last week among the party's candidates for the November 2008 election, leading contenders Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards could not commit to having all US troops out of Iraq by 2013, when their prospective first term as president would end.
Obama said, as president, the only troops remaining in Iraq after a 16-month drawdown would be there to protect US forces and diplomats and to stage counter-terrorism strikes.
"Let there be no doubt: I will end this war," he said.
Edwards is to give an Iraq speech of his own in New Hampshire on Wednesday, and will say how he would deal with US security contractors in Iraq accused of killing Iraqi civilians.
Obama began a new push to make up ground against Clinton, who has a double-digit lead in national polls but whose advantage in the early voting state of Iowa is much narrower.
Just before embarking on a four-day swing through Iowa, Obama also said he would depoliticise US intelligence services by making the head of intelligence a four-year appointment.
- REUTERS
