Clinton and Giuliani Take Obama to Task

Barack Obama, in front of the Clarendon County Courthouse in Manning, S.C., made an unusually direct race-based appeal. "I never would have begun this campaign if I weren't confident I could win," added the senator from Illinois. (By Stephen Morton -- Associated Press)

UNDER FIRE OVER IRAN

---

Clinton and Giuliani Take Obama to Task

---

Barack Obama has tried to focus the Iran debate on his own world view over the past few days, introducing Senate legislation that would require specific congressional approval to go to war and telling interviewers that he would pursue an aggressive diplomatic approach toward the nation if he were elected president.

The Illinois Democrat's rivals wasted no time pushing back. Hillary Rodham Clinton, asked about her Senate colleague's Iran policy, said that while she would encourage "vigorous diplomacy," she does not think the president should play as direct a role as Obama is advocating.

"I do not believe the president should initially be engaged in personal diplomacy; I don't think that's the smart course to take," the senator from New York said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday. "There certainly will be opportunities for a president to become involved, but it has to be planned and managed. I watched my husband deal with difficult problems."

Without mentioning Obama by name, Clinton added: "And I don't think you promise without preconditions for the president to meet with the leaders of antagonistic states and get nothing in return, and you thereby undermine or even short-circuit the diplomatic process."

In a rare moment of bipartisan comity, GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani agreed with the Democratic front-runner. "This may be one of the few areas in which I agree with Hillary Clinton," the former New York mayor said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that will air this weekend.

Giuliani described Obama as having "a great deal of inexperience" and being "very, very naive" before launching into a diatribe against Obama's Iran policy. Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded to Giuliani's criticism by noting that "it's time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, not lectures from a mayor who skipped out on the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches, and who was naive and irresponsible enough to recommend someone with ties to convicted felons for secretary of homeland security."

-- Anne E. Kornblut

ON THE FRINGE

---

In New Hampshire, A Diverse Field

---

The deadline bell for candidates to file in the New Hampshire presidential primary rang yesterday at the secretary of state's office in Concord, making official the absence of notable would-be candidates such as Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. But who needs a Nobel Peace Prize winner or former speaker of the House when you've got 44 candidates to choose from? In addition to the familiar names, they include: