ONE presidential nomination candidate arrested, one marked absent and one accused of dirty tricks that was the tally yesterday in the latest act of the troubled 1996 Republican presidential nomination campaign.
Police slapped handcuffs on Republican presidential nomination candidate Mr Alan Keyes on Sunday night when he tried to enter a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, for a debate from which he had been excluded.
Front runner Mr Bob Dole meanwhile drew criticism from his rivals for failing to turn up for the debate, to which WSB TV station had invited the four leading contenders. "We've had four debates, I don't know anyone who watches them," Mr Dole said.
And yesterday his main rival, Mr Pat Buchanan, was accused by the Washington Post, on the basis of an unpublished document, of urging the Nixon White House while he worked there to mount "covert operations" to harass Democratic rivals.
The arrest by white police officers of Mr Keyes, an ultra conservative African American who is popular with Republicans as an orator, if not a candidate, is a major embarrassment to the party and to the city where the Olympics are to be held this year.
"I am exercising my constitutional right to free speech, get your hands off me," the former Reagan administration diplomat cried out as police detained him outside the television station on criminal trespass charges. The sight of the black politician being handcuffed was shown on television throughout the US.
"This is like Martin Luther King," Mr Keyes called out as his supporters chanted "Let him speak, let him speak."
Police bundled Mr Keyes into a car and drove off but after 20 minutes released him without charge in an east Atlanta car park, after a sergeant drove up and ordered them to let him out. The candidate said he found a pay telephone and was calling his staff, when the same sergeant returned and announced that Atlanta Mayor Mr Bill Campbell was on his way to give him a ride back.
The mayor "told me he hoped it didn't ruin my impression of Atlanta," said Mr Keyes, a fervent opponent of abortion, whose companions among the also runs in the Republican primaries Senator Richard Lugar and Congressman Bob Dornan, were also not invited to the debate.
WSB TV said it thought that inviting the top four candidates Mr Dole, Mr Buchanan, publisher Mr Steve Forbes and former Tennessee governor, Mr Lamar Alexander would produce the most substantive debate.
Last week Mr Dole skipped a debate in Arizona and lost the primary there to Mr Buchanan.
In the debate Mr Forbes, who is campaigning on a flat tax proposal, recalled how Mr Buchanan had defended Nazis and made an "objectionable" reference to Israel's "Amen Comer" in Congress during the Gulf War crisis.
The revelations about Mr Buchanan's dirty tricks proposals when serving President Richard Nixon come in a critical week of the primary campaign.
Eight states vote today on "Junior Tuesday". Commentators predict that Mr Dole has a good chance of justifying the slogan which has begun appearing at his rallies. This proclaims "Bob Dole the Comeback Adult". Four years ago Democratic candidate Mr Bill Clinton was dubbed the "Comeback Kid", after early setbacks.
The Senate majority leader is ahead in opinion polls in all eight states and in New York, which votes on Thursday. He won South Carolina on Saturday by 16 points and scored a landslide victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday.
The Washington Post claimed that on April 10th, 1972, Mr Buchanan made proposals in a memo to White House colleagues on how to disrupt that summer's Democratic national convention. On the last page, never turned over to the Senate Watergate Committee, he recommended staging fake attacks by one Democrat on another, fouling up scheduled events, starting rumours and staging demonstrations to plague the Democrats.
In testimony before the committee in 1973, Mr Buchanan denied being aware of any covert operations sponsored by the Republican Party for the Democratic convention.
The paper admitted it did not know if the page had been sent, but the accusation adds further damaging evidence to a growing dossier of negative information about Mr Buchanan.