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Huckabee grilled over Aids call
10/12/2007 09:31 - (SA)
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| Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee responds to a question during the Univision Republican Presidential Candidate Forum at the University of Miami. (Luis M Alvarez, AP) |
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Washington - Top Republican White House hopeful Mike Huckabee was forced on the defensive about his past on Sunday, as he was grilled about his 1992 belief that Aids patients should be quarantined.
New attention is being paid to Huckabee's record as the wisecracking, avuncular Baptist pastor surges in the polls, less than a month before Iowa kicks off the party nominating contests.
Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, former Arkansas governor Huckabee said he would probably "say things a little differently" now than when he was asked his views on Aids 15 years ago.
"But what I'm not going to do is to go back and now try to change every story I've ever had. I'm going to simply say that that was exactly what I said. I don't run from it, don't recant from it," he said.
As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee told The Associated Press that if the US government wanted to deal effectively with Aids, "we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague".
Homosexuality 'unnatural, sinful'
The Baptist minister was also quoted as calling homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle".
Speaking on Fox, Huckabee insisted that there were legitimate concerns in the early 1990s about whether Aids could be spread by casual contact, despite US government advice as early as 1985 that this was impossible.
Huckabee was also grilled over his ignorance, more than 24 hours after it was released, of a new US intelligence appraisal last week that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
The Republican candidate had said he was too busy on the campaign trail to learn immediately of Tuesday's National Intelligence Estimate, a change of heart by the spy agencies that contradicted bellicose US talk on Iran.
"It shows more than anything not what I didn't know, but what our own intelligence community didn't know," Huckabee said.
Republican race
A Newsweek survey on Friday suggested that Huckabee has opened up a gaping lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, of 39% to 17%, ahead of the state's nominating caucuses on January 3.
Romney delivered a landmark speech on Thursday, asking Americans not to reject him over his Mormon religion, partly motivated by Huckabee's strong support among crucial evangelical voters in Iowa.
The candidates' personal and political beliefs will get another airing on Wednesday at the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
While leading in national Republican polls, National Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani trails badly in Iowa and the other early-voting state of New Hampshire, but is banking on carrying bigger states such as New York, Florida and California.
- AFP
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