Obama and Clinton clash on YouTube
Updated on 24 July 2007
Top Democrat US presidential race rivals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have clashed in an internet debate on the YouTube website.
The debate featured video questions submitted from around the world, including one posed by workers in a Darfur refugee camp and another from an animated snowman worried about global warming.
During one of the exchanges, Mrs Clinton pounced on rival Mr Obama for his willingness to meet with troublesome world leaders, such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Mr Obama, who is looking to cut Mrs Clinton's lead in polls, said it was important to search for areas "where we can potentially move forward" and added: "I think it's a disgrace that we have not spoken to them."
But Mrs Clinton disagreed, saying such meetings could be used as propaganda purposes. She said: "Certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria, until we know better what the way forward would be."
The format was designed to force candidates to drop their rehearsed answers and sound bites and sparked lively exchanges between all eight Democratic candidates on Iraq and diplomacy, and an extended discussion of race and gender involving Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton.
Asked if Muslim leaders in the Middle East would be able to negotiate and work with a woman, the New York senator said that after meeting various foreign leaders as First Lady to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s: "There isn't much doubt in anyone's mind that I can be taken seriously."
Mrs Clinton said she was proud to be running as a woman, and Mr Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said Americans were ready to go beyond racial divisions.
More than 2,000 video questions were posted on YouTube's site for the debate.
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