Kerry says gaffe will not stop him from running in 2008

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - Senator John Kerry has said a gaffe last month widely seen as a slight against US troops in Iraq would not deter him from considering the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Grilled on US television Sunday about his political worth as a presidential hopeful after his verbal blunder, and asked if he had given up hope of a future White House run after losing to President George W. Bush in 2004, Kerry, 62, was adamant.

"Not in the least. I'm looking at it in the same way," he said in an interview with Fox News Sunday television program.

"My team is confident and strong," Kerry said.

However, the Massachusetts Senator said he had not made up his mind about running again.

"My decision would be somewhere around the turn of the year, beginning of the year," he said.

Kerry, a former Vietnam War veteran, caused an outcry when he said at an October 30 political rally that Americans who neglect their education would "get stuck in Iraq."

He apologized for his remark, saying it was never intended to insult US troops, but blamed the "Republican attack machine" for the controversy surrounding what he had said had been a "botched joke."

He withdrew from campaigning for the November 7 legislative elections to avoid becoming a distraction.

The elections gave Kerry's party control of both houses of Congress, in a vote Kerry said Sunday was a referendum on the Iraq war, the Republicans' leadership of the US government, and a sign that Americans were "tired of a corrupt (and) dysfunctional" Congress.