ONALASKA, Oct 26: president George Bush and his rival John Kerry traded blows over Iraq and taxes on Tuesday as they headed into the final week of their tight presidential race scrambling for late votes to swing the outcome.

The president and the Massachusetts senator kicked off the final seven days of campaigning in the midwestern state of Wisconsin, one of the battlegrounds that could hold the key to next Tuesday's election.

Bush stumped at an ice hockey rink here, vaunting his economic record and reiterating his criticisms of Kerry as a "tax and spend" disciple of the Democratic party's left wing.

"My opponent promises to raise their taxes and, unfortunately for our small-business owners, that's a promise most politicians tend to keep," Bush quipped to supporters.

Kerry, in Green Bay, concentrated on national security that polls show is uppermost in voters' minds. He said that Bush had over the past four years "failed to make America as safe and secure as we should be."

Kerry roasted the Republican over the disappearance of nearly 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq and lashed the president for failing to address the controversy that broke Monday.

"George Bush has not offered a single word of explanation ... he failed to secure Iraq and keep it from becoming what it is today - a haven for terrorists."

Kerry also pounded Bush on a report that the administration would request 70 billion dollars in new funding for Iraq and Afghanistan next year, asking "how much more will the American people have to pay?"

Polls showed the already close race becoming maddeningly tighter. Tracking surveys by the Washington Post and Rasmussen group put Kerry ahead by a point or two; the Los Angeles Times had the race even.

But Zogby International gave the president a three-point edge at 49-46 percent.

The TIPP polling organization showed his lead widening in the last three days to eight points at 50-42 percent and Gallup placed it at 51-46 percent.

The numbers were murkier on the state level, where both sides were battling to stitch together the 270 electoral votes that decide the presidency. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania drew most of the attention but remained too close to call.

The challenger's campaign has been boosted by the return of former president Bill Clinton, just seven weeks after critical heart surgery. He was to speak for Kerry in Florida on Tuesday and head out west later in the week.

The Democrats hope to use Clinton's enormous popularity among minorities and other constituencies, as well as his eight-year record of economic prosperity and fiscal prudence, to solidify Kerry's base and reach out to swing voters.

The candidates went into the home stretch of their marathon race for the White House with the Bush administration on the defensive over the reports of the cache of explosives going missing in Iraq.

But while avoiding speaking about the explosives, Bush has kept up attacks on Kerry for criticizing the US-led invasion of Iraq and promoting what the president called a "strategy of pessimism and retreat."

Bush aides said the White House had known of the missing explosives for 10 days and that there was no risk of nuclear proliferation. They stressed the missing explosives were just a drop in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of armaments seized. -AFP