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Rice told embassies to limit aid for Obama, McCain

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-22 12:01

WASHINGTON -- As US Democrat Barack Obama began an overseas tour, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told employees at US embassies to provide only minimal help to visiting presidential candidates.

In this photo released by the US army, US presidential candidate Barack Obama, left, and top US military commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, talk as they take a helicopter ride over Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, July 21, 2008. Iraq's government welcomed Obama on Monday with a message of apparent common ground on American troop withdrawal goals: expressing hopes that combat forces could leave by 2010.  [Agencies]

The orders went to all overseas posts and told government employees not to do anything that might show favoritism or amount to improper campaign activity.

The department said the State Department issued similar orders ahead of presumed Republican nominee John McCain's overseas tours to Iraq, Mexico and elsewhere this year, but limited the communication to embassies in countries the Republican planned to visit.

Officials said the orders had been in the works for months and it was just coincidence that they were issued Thursday, the day the presumptive Democratic candidate left Washington for a much-watched trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.

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