January 22, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 12, 1429

COLUMBIA (South Carolina), Jan 21: Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton invoked the civil rights dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday as their White House quests came up against a sizeable black constituency for the first time.

On the national holiday commemorating King’s birth, the two senators joined thousands of people — mostly black — under brilliant skies for a procession and rally at the statehouse in the South Carolina capital.

The Republicans meanwhile were campaigning full-bore in Florida, which on Jan 29 will stage a four-way fight between new front-runner John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

A week after burying one explosive row over race, the Democratic hopefuls were locked in fresh recriminations over the strident campaigning of former president Bill Clinton, ahead of a televised debate in the evening.

At the rally, Obama vied to inherit King’s role as inspirer-in-chief for a troubled nation — and took a coded shot at

Hillary Clinton, who was booed by isolated hecklers in the crowd.

“We can no longer afford to build ourselves up, by tearing each other down.

We don’t need a politics of fear in this country, we all need a politics of hope. That is what Dr King’s message is about,” he said.

The former first lady, who met King as a teenager in Chicago seven years before he was gunned down in 1968, paid tribute to Obama as an “extraordinary young African-American man.” But she said that her running for president as a woman was also a measure of King’s civil-rights legacy, and signalled that experience also counted to translate dreams into reality.

“The work is far from finished, the dream is nowhere fulfilled,” Clinton said, as she recalled watching the civil rights icon speak in her youth.

“Now we are called to rise up, and speak up, and finally get it done. We have waited far too long,” she said.

Obama singled out Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” comment about his position on the Iraq war, and the former president’s efforts to prevent Nevada’s Democratic Party from holding caucuses Saturday inside Las Vegas casinos.—AFP