US:DEMOCRATIC LEADERS will intervene next week to end the party's nominating race, urging uncommitted superdelegates to take sides immediately rather than allowing the contest to last until August's national convention.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said that, after Montana and South Dakota hold the final primaries next Tuesday, he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and party chairman Howard Dean will tell superdelegates that it is time to choose a candidate.
"By this time next week, it will all be over, give or take a day," Mr Reid said.
Barack Obama expects to win a majority of delegates by the middle of next week and he told reporters this week that, if he reaches that number, he will be the party's nominee even if Hillary Clinton does not formally give up.
Mrs Clinton is demanding that a party committee should agree today to recognise all the delegates from disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan. The committee is more likely to cut the states' delegations in half, a move that would give Mrs Clinton about 20 extra delegates but would have little impact on Mr Obama's lead.
If a motion to recognise the entire delegations fails today, Mrs Clinton's supporters could appeal the decision to the party's credentials committee in July and even to the national convention itself in August. Mrs Clinton's closest advisers believe her best hope of winning the nomination lies in remaining a candidate as long as possible in case Mr Obama stumbles politically or is hit by a major scandal.
Mr Obama said this week that he was "deeply disappointed" by a supporter's sermon at his church that mocked Mrs Clinton and suggested that she is a white supremacist.
Fr Michael Pfleger also apologised for last Sunday's sermon at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, in which he said Mrs Clinton's eyes filled with tears before the New Hampshire primary because she felt "entitled" to the Democratic nomination and because "there's a black man stealing my show".
The Catholic priest, who is white, spoke about Mrs Clinton as he told the mainly black congregation of the need to expose "white entitlement and supremacy" wherever it raises its head.
"She just always thought that, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white.' . . . And then, out of nowhere, came 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama'. And she said, 'Oh damn, where did you come from? I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show'," Fr Pfleger said, pretending to sob and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.
"She wasn't the only one crying," he said. "There was a whole lot of white people crying."
Mr Obama condemned the priest's "divisive, backward-looking rhetoric" but Mrs Clinton's campaign said it was disappointed that he did not specifically condemn Fr Pfleger's remarks about the former first lady.
Mr Obama has avoided mentioning Mrs Clinton in recent days, focusing all his attention on the general election fight with Republican John McCain. The two men have squabbled this week over foreign policy, with Mr McCain accusing the Democrat of taking a naive approach to the situation in Iraq and towards the Middle East in general.
Mr Obama's team yesterday pounced on Mr McCain when the Republican mistakenly suggested that US force levels in Iraq were back to their level before the surge of 20,000 extra troops last year.
"That just is just not true. And everybody knows it's not true. And I assume Senator McCain just doesn't know the facts here," Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle, an Obama supporter, told reporters.
Mr McCain said yesterday that he would take personal charge of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians from the moment he takes office as president. "I would have a hands-on approach. I would be the chief negotiator. I have been there for 30 years. I know the leaders, I know them extremely well. Ehud Barak and I have gone back 30 years. I knew Olmert when he was mayor of Jerusalem. I've met many times with Netanyahu. I've met with Mahmoud Abbas," Mr McCain told the Atlantic Monthly.