by Giles Hewitt
DETROIT, Michigan, July 22 (AFP) - US Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry vowed Thursday to make America safer, as he stepped back on the campaign trail just hours after a commission probing the September 11 attacks released its findings.
Rejoining the electoral fray after a four-day break soured by a senior aide's resignation for mishandling classified documents, Kerry chided President George W. Bush for dragging his heels over national security reform, both before and after the attacks in 2001.
"If I am elected president and there has still not been sufficient progress on these issues, I will not wait a single day more. I will lead," Kerry told reporters in Detroit.
The commission's 567-page report, which concluded two years of investigation, cited "failures of imagination, policy, capabilities and management" by the US government and recommended an intelligence overhaul.
"This report carries a simple message for all of America, about the security of all Americans: We can do better," Kerry said. "We must do better, and there is an urgency about us doing better."
Kerry said as president he would immediately convene an "emergency security summit," bringing leading Democrats and Republicans together with security agencies to map out and implement a reform programme.
"The terrorists will not wait for us, and we will not wait for them," he said.
While stressing the importance of bipartisan cooperation, the senator from Massachusetts took several sideswipes at the Bush administration and deflected some of the commission's criticisms of Congress onto the White House.
"Congress shares some responsibilities," he said. "But a watchdog role is a role of proposal, of scrutiny. The bottom line is that the executive is the implementer."
Kerry said he wanted to be able to look the relatives of those who died in the September 11 attacks in the eyes and tell them "We have done everything that we need to do."
"This report makes it clear that that has not happened yet, even three years after the attacks," he said, blaming a turf war between the White House, the State Department and the Defence Department for hobbling the pace of change.
"It has created a struggle that has delayed our ability to move forward," Kerry said, adding that reform was "long overdue."
The commission report issued a broad indictment of US intelligence and stated that none of the measures adopted by the government from 1998 to 2001 "disturbed or even delayed the progress" of al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
Kerry's stop in Detroit -- to address a major African-American organisation -- came on the eve of a special campaign push, aimed at building momentum ahead of the Democratic national convention in Boston, where he will accept his party's presidential nomination on July 29.
His initial task has been to distance himself from a potential stumbling block in the form of Bill Clinton's former national security adviser Sandy Berger, who stepped down as an aide to the Kerry campaign on Tuesday.
Berger admitted he had improperly removed classified documents from the National Archives before testifying in March to the September 11 commission.
Bush's re-election team quickly seized on the issue, insisting that Kerry should come clean about whether he benefitted from the documents taken by Berger.
For its part, the Kerry camp accused the Bush administration of seeking to deflect media attention from the commission's report.
Kerry, in an NBC News interview, denied any prior knowledge of Berger's predicament, saying he "didn't have a clue" he was already under investigation by the FBI.
On Friday, in his birthplace of Aurora, Colorado, Kerry will kick off a week-long swing through symbolic sites in states that are expected to go to the wire in the November 2 presidential election.
An opinion poll released this week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the Democrats as a party had moved from a tie on dealing with the economy to a 12-point lead, while also eliminating the Republicans' 10-point edge on foreign policy.
But that turnaround was not reflected in the White House race, which remained firmly deadlocked, with Kerry and running mate John Edwards enjoying a narrow 46 percent to 44 percent poll advantage over Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.