US:HILLARY CLINTON'S campaign is set to take a less combative approach following the resignation of her chief strategist Mark Penn, who was lobbying privately on behalf of a trade deal the New York senator publicly opposes.
Mr Penn, who will continue to provide polling and advice to Mrs Clinton, left his post on Sunday after it emerged that he had a meeting last week with the Colombian ambassador to the United States in his capacity as a corporate lobbyist. Colombia paid Mr Penn's firm an annual fee of $300,000 to promote a trade deal with the US that is unpopular among Democrats and which Mrs Clinton has promised to block.
"As I have said consistently for several months, I oppose signing any trade deal with Colombia while violence against trade unionists continues and the perpetrators are not brought to justice.
"The United States should be pursuing trade agreements that promote human rights and worker rights, not overlook egregious abuses," Mrs Clinton said yesterday.
Mr Penn has advised Mrs Clinton and former president Bill Clinton since 1996 but he is unpopular within her campaign, where many aides blame him for strategic blunders that allowed Barack Obama to move into the lead in the Democratic race.
Mr Penn insisted throughout 2007 that it was more important that Mrs Clinton should be seen as tough and experienced rather than approachable and an agent of change and he oversaw the strategy of focusing on a few big states while ignoring the caucuses in smaller states that gave Mr Obama his advantage.
Mr Penn's private lobbying has drawn criticism in the past, notably because his clients include Countrywide, a mortgage company deeply implicated in the sub-prime crisis, and Blackwater, the private security firm that has killed numerous civilians in Iraq.
The Colombian government announced on Saturday it had dispensed with the company's services after Mr Penn apologised for meeting with its representatives, saying his statement conveyed a "lack of respect" for the country.
Mrs Clinton's staff shake-up, which gives a more prominent role to communications director Harold Wolfson, comes two weeks before a primary in Pennsylvania which the former first lady must win to have any chance of securing her party's nomination.
Mrs Clinton, who has seen her lead over Mr Obama in the state shrink in recent weeks, yesterday sought to change the subject, urging President George Bush to boycott the Olympics in Beijing this summer.
"The violent clashes in Tibet and the failure of the Chinese government to use its full leverage with Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur are opportunities for presidential leadership," she said.
Today, all three presidential candidates will question Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, about the military campaign there and the progress made since the surge in US troop numbers last year.
Republican candidate John McCain yesterday condemned both Democratic candidates for displaying a "failure of leadership" by making promises about Iraq they cannot keep.
"I do not believe that anyone should make promises as a candidate for president that they cannot keep if elected," Mr McCain told the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
"To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility."
Mr Obama responded that Mr McCain's support for a war the Democrat said had not made the US safer was the real mistake.
"It's a failure of leadership to support an open-ended occupation of Iraq that has failed to press Iraq's leaders to reconcile, badly overstretched our military, put a strain on our military families, set back our ability to lead the world and made the American people less safe," Mr Obama said.