New Delhi: US Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama has finally admitted a big mistake, saying his campaign staff made a serious error in a memo questioning Hillary Clinton's ties with India and Indian Americans.
The memo had referred to Hillary Clinton as 'D-Punjab', a play on journalistic shorthand meant to suggest the Senator from New York was actually a Democrat representing the Indian state Punjab. The document referred to Hollary's investments in India and her fundraising among Indian-Americans.
It also mentioned the $300,000 fees that her husband Bill Clinton was paid by Cisco, a company that has moved US jobs to India.
Owning responsibility for the offending memo, Obama said he had not seen it before distribution and that he was not aware of its contents. However, he took responsibility for the mistake and clarified that the memo did not reflect his long-standing ties with the Indian American community
"We have taken appropriate action to prevent errors like this from happening in the future," he said in a statement to South Asians in response to the concerns expressed by the Indian American community.
In his first personal response to the outcry against his campaign's 'research memo' last week implying that given Clintons' India connections, the former first lady was better suited to represent the state of Punjab, the rising Black star said, "I believe that your concerns with the memo are justified."
"To begin with, the memo did not reflect my own views on the importance of America's relationship with India," he said of the document.
"I have long believed that the best way to promote US economic growth and opportunity for American workers is to continually improve the skills of our own workforce and invest in our own scientific research, technological capacity and infrastructure, rather than to try to insulate ourselves from the global economy," Obama said.
At a meeting with Des Moines Register editors and reporters, Obama referred to the memo as "stupid" and "caustic". "It was a screw-up on the part of our research team. It wasn't anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen," he was quoted as saying by the paper.
The document also cited comments Hillary Clinton made to an Indian-American audience in March in which she said, "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily."
"That particular quote was a joke, I think, that Hillary Clinton made to an Indian-American audience," Obama told the Register. "The research team thought it would be clever to put that at the top."
(With agency inputs)
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