By AFP,
Washington : Hillary Clinton is set formally to abandon her White House campaign at the end of the week after having bid an emotional farewell to her loyal staff, media reports said Wednesday.
The reports by several US outlets came a day after Barack Obama secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination and as the party coalesced behind the Illinois senator to take the fight to Republican John McCain.
Clinton, however, had refused to concede Tuesday and said she would deliberate in the coming days.
There was no immediate comment from the Clinton campaign to the reports, which said the former first lady would bring the curtain down on her doomed drive to become the first woman president on Friday.
A Clinton insider told AFP: “She is taking the next few days to review her options and talk to party leaders and uncommitted delegates.”
Clinton visited her campaign headquarters in Arlington, in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, on Wednesday to inform most of the staff that they would no longer be required after Friday, ABC News said.
Junior staffers were said to be emotional and some were crying at the final confirmation that their 16 months of hard graft had come to naught.
On its website, The New York Times quoted a senior advisor to Clinton as saying the New York senator would likely suspend her campaign and endorse Obama on Friday at the urging of Democratic members of Congress keen to fight McCain.
Clinton was likely to make the announcement in New York City, but no final venue has been chosen, the newspaper said.
Clinton would be bowing to the reality that after the final primaries were held in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, Obama is the Democratic Party’s heir apparent for November’s election against the Arizona senator. However, in refusing to concede Tuesday, she had kept her options open, and Clinton surrogates spent Wednesday talking up her credentials to be Obama’s nominee for vice president.
Clinton sung her rival’s praises to a powerful pro-Israel lobby earlier in the day, her clearest admission yet that the race was over.
“Let me be very clear, I know that Senator Obama will be a good friend to Israel,” she said, seeking to shed the Illinois senator’s perceived weaknesses among Jewish voters.
Obama also heaped praise on his rival for making “history” on the campaign trail, as the two addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC) within minutes of each other.
Obama told reporters after a visit to the US Senate that he had talked with Clinton in the early hours of Wednesday.
“We are going to be having a conversation with the coming weeks,” he said, adding he was confident the party would be unified by the November elections.
On November 4, voters must pick between Obama, 46, a freshman senator and charismatic mixed-race champion of a new political generation, and McCain, 71, a wounded Vietnam war hero asking for one final call to service.
Obama plunged straight into the five-month election battle Wednesday, crossing swords with McCain over Middle East policy.
Laying out the contours of his presidential program, Obama insisted Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel, and said he would work to “eliminate” the threat posed by Iran.
“His appearance was very impressive. His words on Jerusalem were very moving,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters after meeting President George W. Bush in the White House.
But less than two hours later, McCain’s campaign was on the attack, denouncing Obama for presenting a “rather odd, alternative reality.”
“Senator Obama really presents kind of a false choice today, that the only diplomacy that can work is with Iranian leaders,” McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann told reporters.
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign announced that Caroline Kennedy, daughter of assassinated president John F. Kennedy, had been selected as part of a three-member team searching for a vice presidential pick.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement that the team would also include former deputy attorney general Eric Holder and James Johnson, a senior Democratic Party insider.
“He will work closely with them in the coming weeks but ultimately this will be his decision and his alone,” Burton said.
Clinton’s campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, told MSNBC television that an Obama-Clinton ticket would be “unstoppable.” He added: “I think we would have the White House for 16 years.”