Date:16/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/16/stories/2008031655881200.htm

International

Obama denounces pastor’s remarks

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama, who is battling Hillary Rodham Clinton in a tough race for the Democratic presidential nomination, denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the U.S. and accused its leaders of bringing on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by spreading terrorism.

Mr. Obama called the pastor’s statements widely aired on television and the Internet “completely unacceptable and inexcusable” in a Fox News television interview on Friday night and said they did not reflect the kinds of sermons he had heard from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright while attending services at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

Mr. Obama, a member of the church since the early 1990s, said he would have quit Trinity had such statements been “the repeated tenor of the church. ... I wouldn’t feel comfortable there.”

Earlier on Friday, Mr. Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Rev. Wright and Trinity on the Huffington Post. Rev. Wright brought Mr. Obama to Christianity, officiated at his wedding, baptised his daughters.

Mr. Obama wrote that he has looked to Rev. Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance. — AP