Governor George W Bush has agreed to three debates with his presidential election opponent, Vice-President Al Gore, after lifting his objections to the proposals by the official organisation.
For several weeks the Bush campaign had been refusing to accept the proposal for three debates laid down by the Commission on Presidential Debates which has organised them since the 1988 election. This had given rise to reports that Mr Bush feared debating Mr Gore in the formats proposed by the commission and that there might not be any debate.
During the primary campaigns, Mr Bush avoided the first debate in New Hampshire among the Republican candidates. In subsequent debates he held his own against his five opponents.
Mr Gore has a reputation as a tough debater with a detailed knowledge of the issues, an area where Mr Bush is seen to be weak as well as being prone to mispronunciations.
The agreement between the two campaigns is seen as a climbdown by Mr Bush. He said yesterday about Mr Gore: "I know the man is a great debater, but what Americans want is a great leader."
Mr Bush had wanted two of the three televised debates to take place on Meet the Press and Larry King Live. He said this format would allow a more free-flowing debate and he accused Mr Gore of going back on agreements to debate him on these programmes "any time".
But Mr Gore pointed out that such debates would only be carried on one channel and not reach a nationwide audience. He said he accepted the commission's proposal for three 90-minute debates in different cities to be televised nationwide on all networks. He would only debate Mr Bush on the other programmes if it was in addition to the three official debates.
Mr Bush has now dropped his demand for the more informal debates and agreed to those proposed by the commission. But his campaign is still hoping to get changes in the format. His spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, said Mr Bush wanted "a freeflowing, spontaneous format instead of rehearsed, wooden formats where candidates are rewarded for memorising 30-second sound bites".
The debates will take place in Boston on October 3rd, Winston-Salem in North Carolina on October 11th, and St Louis on October 17th. There will also be one vice-presidential debate between the Democratic candidate, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Republican candidate, Mr Dick Cheney in Danville, Kentucky, on October 5th.
There is now no chance that two other presidential candidates, Mr Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party and Mr Ralph Nader of the Green Party, will be included in the debates. Under the rules of the commission, only candidates with a minimum of 15 per cent in six opinion polls will be invited to take part.
Mr Buchanan has about 1 per cent support at present and Mr Nader 5 per cent.
In the 1996 election there were only two debates between President Clinton and Mr Robert Dole. The record for the number of presidential debates goes back to 1960, when Vice-President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy debated four times.
The FBI and Russian customs officials agreed yesterday to co-operate in fighting "economic contraband". The FBI director, Mr Louis Freeh, and Russian Customs Committee chairman, Mr Mikhail Vanin, discussed ways to combat cross-border economic crimes at a meeting in Moscow.