PUEBLO, Colorado, Oct 23 (AFP) - Democratic hopeful John Kerry Saturday accused President George W. Bush of letting Osama bin Laden slip "out the back door" and of waging a scare campaign to make voters reelect him.
Kerry, in Colorado probing what Democrats think could be a weak point in Bush`s core support 10 days before the election, hit back a day after his rival aired a menacing ad featuring prowling wolves which branded him weak on terror.
The senator from Massachusetts hammered away at Bush`s claims that only he could be trusted to head off future terror attacks on the United States, saying the president let bin Laden escape in the Afghan mountains in 2001.
Kerry claimed Bush had called on Afghan warlords to hunt down bin Laden and not used US troops for the hazardous task, weeks after the September 11 attacks, a charge already denied by the Bush administration.
"Osama bin Laden just walked out the back door," he said at a rally here.
And Kerry hit back at claims by Bush that he has fundamentally misunderstood the battle against terrorism.
"The President keeps going around the country trying to scare people. He talks about only one thing, it`s terrorism, the war on terrorism.
"I am prepared to have that fight because I can wage a better war on terrorism than George Bush has."
Kerry told an estimated 15,000 strong crowd gathered on a crisp morning around a restored 19th century railroad station that they should not heed Bush`s "scare" tactics.
"Vote your hopes and not the fears that President George W. Bush wants to to feel," he said.
Kerry unusually interrupted the opening paragraphs of his stump speech to hand the microphone to his daughter Vanessa, who is taking a year out from medical school to campaign for him.
"This is the man who told me wake up every day and try to make somebody`s life better," she told the cheering crowd, before embracing her father.
Her appearance came as Kerry tries to improve his standing among women voters, among whom his support lags behind that of Al Gore in 2000.
Kerry`s appearance in Colorado, the state of his birth, was partly designed to court the state`s 200,000 Hispanic voters, who in a tight race could decide not just who wins the state, or in some scenarios, even the presidency itself.
"This is absolutely the most important election of our lifetime," Kerry said, then gave it a go in Spanish, intoning: "esta es la eleccion mas importante de nuestras vidas."
Colorado fell in Bush`s column in 2000, but Democrats, seizing upon opinion polls which have shown the president ahead by only a few points, feel they have a chance of snatching the state back on November 2.
The race here is further complicated by a landmark electoral reform proposal also on the ballot which would divide up the state`s nine electoral college votes instead of allocating them all in a winner take all formula.
If the so-called Amendment 36 had been in force here in 2000, Bush would have carried five electoral college votes instead of all of Colorado`s nine.
That would have translated to a final electoral college tally of 270 for Gore and 267 for Bush -- leaving the former vice president in the White House. As it was Bush finished with 271 votes and Gore took 266.
As he cranked up his campaign 10 days from the November 2 election, Kerry was later to head to a rally in another battleground state, New Mexico, before flying east across two time zones to Florida, and a volley of campaign appearances on Sunday.
10/23/2004 17:03 GMT - AFP