[POL] Clinton urges Kerry to avoid 'cultural' issues

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Bill Clinton has warned Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, to counter Republican efforts to turn this year's election into a debate on gay marriage and other "cultural issues" such as gun control and abortion.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the former US president urged Senator Kerry to fight a values-based campaign focused on health, education and crime.

If he stayed on that ground, Mr Kerry could win by "quite a nice margin".

President George W. Bush has championed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to rally social conservatives.

But the proposed Federal Marriage amendment failed to pass in the US Senate on Wednesday, and would still require ratification by two-thirds of the House and 38 of 50 states.

Mr Clinton, who is on a tour of Europe promoting his autobiography, offered a warm endorsement of Mr Kerry's candidacy.

Dismissing suggestions that Mr Kerry came from the party's liberal past, he decribed the prospective nominee as a "New Democrat" with a 21st-century vision.

The former president also praised John Edwards, the vice-presidential candidate who has been compared to a younger Clinton.

Mr Edwards was a political leader with "unlimited potential", Mr Clinton said, in an apparent acknowledgment that he could be a future presidential rival to his wife, Hillary Clinton.

Mr Clinton strongly endorsed Tony Blair's position on disarming Iraq, blaming France and Germany for leaving the British prime minister isolated in his efforts to secure a second United Nations resolution.

He contrasted the Bush administration's disregard for UN weapons inspectors with the the refusal of the Paris and Berlin governments to contemplate the removal of Saddam Hussein under any circumstances.

The result was to leave Mr Blair with two "mutually incompatible alternatives".

"You can say you think Blair made a mistake but it's not the same thing as . . . we did in America." Mr Clinton was sharply critical of the US government for seeking to link Mr Hussein with al-Qaeda, adding that the terrorist network did not really care about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But while people might disagree with Mr Blair's decision to support the US, he was "undercut by the position taken by the French and the Germans".
 
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