Clinton calls on supporters to back Obama

Hillary Rodham Clinton told an exuberant crowd she wanted Barack Obama to win the White House, saying that even though he dashed her presidential dream he is a better choice to lead America than Republican John McCain.

The speech in Washington was Clinton’s first at a rally for Obama since their ballyhooed appearance together in June in Unity, New Hampshire, and follows news that former President Bill Clinton, her husband and one of Obama’s toughest critics during the Democratic primary, will speak on the third night of the party’s national convention.

The developments were a further sign of a thaw in relations between Obama and the Clintons, potentially easing worries within the party that bad feelings from the gruelling primary battle might erupt at the Denver convention later this month.

“Anyone who voted for me or caucused for me has so much more in common with Senator Obama than Senator McCain,” Clinton told her cheering audience in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. “Remember who we were fighting for in my campaign.”

She said last night that “we may have started on two separate paths, but we are on one journey now”.

She pointed to key Democratic issues on which Obama and McCain differed – US Supreme Court nominations and health care reform, for example, as reasons that her supporters should not cross party lines.

On the Republican side, the White House announced that Vice President Dick Cheney – a conservative favourite but a divisive national figure – would address the Republican convention along with President George Bush.

There had been doubts about a speech by Cheney, who has been unpopular with most Americans but may be helpful in shoring up the right-wing of the party for McCain, whose reputation as a maverick has worried many evangelical Christians and other Republican conservatives.

McCain and Obama have been locked in a fierce battle ahead of the November 4 presidential elections.

On that front, both candidates weighed in on the military clashes between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, calling for calm and political intervention.

McCain, a former U.S. Navy combat pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war who has touted foreign policy as his area of strength, said that “what’s most critical now is to avoid further confrontation.”

Obama, speaking to reporters during a flight to Hawaii for a holiday, said he was getting regular updates on the violence. He said it was important for the United States to work with international partners to end the conflict.

“I wholeheartedly condemn the violation of Georgia’s sovereignty,” he said.

On arriving in Hawaii, Obama told a crowd at a rally that the change he would bring meant investing in solar, wind and biodiesel power and no longer depending on foreign oil.

“I know that the folks here in Hawaii are especially hard-hit because everything has to come into Hawaii and gas prices have gone up the roof, fuel prices have gone through the roof, and it’s time that you got some real relief and that means actually starting to have an energy policy in this country that makes sense.”

Meanwhile, at a fair in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain told corn producers he did not want to subsidise their ethanol but was eager to help market farm products around the world.

“My friends, we will disagree on a specific issue and that’s healthy,” McCain said. “I believe in renewable fuels. I don’t believe in ethanol subsidies, but I believe in renewable fuels.”

McCain’s position on ethanol could spell trouble for him in traditionally Republican Midwestern farm states because biofuels have been a financial bonanza for farmers.