WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democratic front-runner Barack Obama battled to defuse the most serious threat yet to his presidential hopes after incendiary, racially tinged sermons by his former pastor triggered an uproar.
The mixed-race Illinois senator Tuesday condemned the sermons while standing by his black spiritual mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and appealing for America's divided communities to pursue a "more perfect union."
Obama's bitter rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, stood above the fray as she prepared for the release Wednesday of thousands of pages of documents -- and potential embarrassments -- on her activity as first lady.
Wright, who has now retired from the Chicago church, resigned last week from an Obama campaign committee when videos emerged of him appealing to African-Americans to sing "God damn America" and condemning US "terrorism."
New polls suggested that non-stop airings of the sermons on television networks and the Internet had dented Obama's support, with independent voters who had been excited by his promise of change especially put off.
Obama decried Wright's "profoundly distorted" sermons but refused to disown the 66-year-old Chicago preacher, who welcomed the young community organizer into the Christian flock 20 years ago.
"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in the church? Yes," Obama said in a Philadelphia speech, having previously denied that he was present for Wright's harder-hitting remarks.
"Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed," he said.
But Obama also said Wright "has been like family to me." The fiery reverend officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his two daughters.
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother," the candidate said, recalling that she had sometimes used racially tinged language.
Obama's speech was aimed not just at African-Americans embittered by centuries of discrimination, but at struggling whites and immigrants ill-disposed to atone for past generations' sins.
"It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams," he said.
The Wright controversy "was a dagger aimed at the heart of his candidacy, the essence of which is national reconciliation," said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former presidential advisor.
Galston said the speech was "masterful," but that Obama had failed to address "questions over his longstanding membership of the church and his close personal relationship with Reverend Wright."
A study by HCD Research, which monitored 709 individuals' responses to the Obama speech, said a majority of Democratic, Republican and independent voters did not believe it would lay the Wright controversy to rest.
Campaigning in Philadelphia, Clinton said she had not seen or read her rival's speech, "but I'm very glad that he gave it," underlining the "historic" prospect of a woman or African-American occupying the Oval Office.
The landmark address took place in the run-up to the deadlocked Democrats' next nominating clash in Pennsylvania on April 22.
Obama was to follow it up Wednesday with a speech in North Carolina about Iraq, days after Clinton's own address given to mark Thursday's fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion.
Clinton meanwhile readied for the release by the National Archives of 11,046 pages of her schedules from her White House days alongside husband Bill.
The Obama campaign has been lobbying for the release of the records to see if they back up her claims of foreign-policy experience on an array of challenges such as Northern Ireland and Kosovo.
Republican nominee-elect John McCain was meanwhile to polish his national security credentials in Jerusalem meetings Wednesday with Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
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