MIAMI (AFP) - President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry courted voters in the make-or-break states of Florida and Ohio, squeezing every minute out of the last 48 hours of a race that could swing either way.
So far neither candidate has managed to stake a lead, with Washington Post and Fox polls placing them dead even, even as national security fears leapt to the forefront with the 11th-hour appearance of Osama bin Laden on Friday.
Both men tried to work bin Laden's video address to the American people to their political advantage, with Kerry using the tape to remind voters that Bush has failed to capture the man who launched the September 11, 2001, strikes on the United States, and the president's camp accusing the Massachusetts senator of opportunism.
"America knows that I bring 35 years of experience, more experience than George Bush has in foreign affairs and national security affairs," Kerry told ABC television.
"I'm going to hunt down, capture and kill the terrorists, and I believe I will wage a far more effective war on terror than George Bush has," Kerry said.
Kerry began his day in Ohio, receiving communion at a Roman Catholic Church before joining African American worshippers at Shiloh Baptist church in Dayton. He headed to the tiny northeastern state of New Hampshire, and then on to Florida.
Bush, meanwhile, was stumping across Florida before travelling north to Ohio.
In Miami, he vowed to "keep the pressure on" and rid Cuba of Fidel Castro, an appeal to the hard-line Cuban-Americans Bush counted on to win Florida and the White House in 2000.
"I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant," Bush told a boisterous crowd of supporters here two days before the election, winning the rally's loudest cheers and chants of "Viva Bush."
"Over the next four years, we will continue to press hard and ensure that the gift of freedom finally reaches the men and women of Cuba," he said. "We will not rest, we will keep the pressure on, until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they received here in America."
The crowd packed into the Coconut Grove Convention Center cheered, screamed and applauded, waving pro-Bush signs in English and Spanish and shouting "four more years!"
The latest surveys ahead of Tuesday's election pointed to a photo finish to rival the 2000 contest, with the possibility a candidate could lose the popular vote and win the presidency for the second straight time.
The bin Laden tape returned the focus of the campaign to national security, as surrogates for both candidates staged back-to-back television interviews on Sunday morning political talk shows.
Kerry adviser Bob Shrum again accused Bush of diverting resources from the hunt for bin Laden by launching the invasion of Iraq.
"The issue is that we diverted our forces and our focus from Afghanistan. We went to Iraq. We created a mess in Iraq. It's a terrorist haven that it wasn't before," he told the "Fox News Sunday" program.
Bush adviser Karen Hughes accused the Democratic camp of politicising bin Laden's emergence.
"It's just shameful that (Kerry) would try to use this moment, which is a moment for all Republicans, all Democrats and all Americans to express our revulsion at this face of evil ... that he would try to use that to score political points," Hughes said.
Republican Senator John McCain said bin Laden's tape "focuses all our attention on the transcendent issue, which is the war on terror," where polls show Americans trust Bush more than Kerry.
A report Sunday said American voters had not been swayed by the Al-Qaeda leader's message, in which he warned US voters would be held accountable for any leader who seeks to persecute Muslims.
The New York Times, which interviewed dozens of voters in five key states after the broadcast, found that most people had already made up their minds, and their convictions remained unshaken.

10/31/2004 - 20:34 GMT - AFP