WASHINGTON, Oct 4: A group of 186 former ambassadors, including the son of war hero-turned-president Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican icon, on Monday threw their weight behind Democratic contender John Kerry in the race for the White House.

John Eisenhower, 82, joined the group in strongly criticising the foreign policy of President George W. Bush's administration. Eisenhower said he ended five decades of support for the Republican after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

He condemned "the arrogance and go-it-alone that we've seen" during the Bush term in office. Eisenhower helped his father, who was president from 1953 until 1961, write his memoirs. He was the US ambassador to Belgium from 1969 until 1971.

He said he remembers the regular contacts President Eisenhower - who had earlier been commander of allied forces for the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy, France - had with Bonn, Paris and London to maintain western unity during the Cold War.

Pre-emptive war and disregard for allies "are two things against which my father stood for." The younger Eisenhower announced his surprise support for the Democratic challenger in an open letter published by the Union Leader newspaper of New Hampshire on September 28.

"As son of a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican," he wrote in the newspaper. "For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was.

With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry."

He added that today's Republican party had become "unfamiliar" and had lost its sense of "responsibility" in foreign affairs. "America, though recognised as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. "Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance."-AFP