By APP
New York : Barack Obama, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, cited a 1981 visit to Pakistan while he was a college student, as he countered rivals’ accusations that he lacks foreign policy experience.
Senator Obama, an African-American, also made reference to his ties to relatives in poor villages in Kenya and the years he spent growing up in Indonesia, and says he has real-life experience of foreign countries.
In 1981, Obama visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia and then travelled to Pakistan. According to Obama’s campaign, he was in Karachi for about three weeks and then visited Hyderabad in India.
He spoke of his trip to Pakistan while speaking to supporters at a fund-raiser in San Francisco on Sunday night, according to a dispatch in The New York Times on Thursday.
In Karachi, he stayed with the family of a college friend, Muhammed Hasan Chandoo.
Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk in Westchester county, New York. When contacted, Chandoo said he would make no comments about his relations with “my friend”.
According to The Times, he has donated the maximum, $2,300, to Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general elections.
During the speech, Obama said because of his trip to Pakistan, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
During his years at Occidental College, Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Obama there, the Obama campaign said.
Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it. Hamid was not available for comments as he is traveling abroad, his office said.
With the war in Iraq and extremism among the top issues in the campaign, all three of the presidential contenders have sought to emphasize the value of their very different foreign policy credentials.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has often pointed to his military and combat experience, while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has emphasized her involvement in international and national security issues as both first lady and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
But Obama has argued that his rivals’ longer official record is no substitute for his real-life grass-roots experience. “Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton and Senator McCain,” he said in his remarks in San Francisco.
“Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world,” he continued, provoking laughter among those present. “This I know. When Senator Clinton brags, “I’ve met leaders from 80 countries,” I know what those trips are like. I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of plant that = with the assistance of USAID has started something. And then, you go.”
Over all, Obama’s remarks seemed directed primarily at his Democratic rival, Mrs. Clinton, the dispatch said. But some of his digs, including the one about distinguishing Shias from Sunnis, also apply to McCain.
Even more than a gap on specific policies, Obama and McCain’s respective positions represent a fundamental philosophical difference. Obama’s advisers argue that “there are multiple aspects to experience, each of which can be relevant.” Obama’s experience “provides a different kind of insight – than the traditional resume , said Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs and a National Security Council official who is one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers.