|PIC1|Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried on Wednesday to move past a controversy over racially charged remarks by his former pastor and refocus his message on kitchen-table economic issues.

Obama's campaign and those of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and Republican John McCain all bickered over whether it was a good idea to suspend for the summer the 18.4-cent federal tax on a gallon of gasoline.

Clinton and McCain support the move but Obama says it is the wrong way to approach long-term energy policy.

With Indiana and North Carolina to hold contests next Tuesday, Obama focused on gas prices and the weakening job market as he campaigned in Indiana.

His shift to economic issues came after Obama denounced his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, saying he was appalled by Wright's recent appearances in which he repeated charges that the US Government deserved some blame for the September 11 attacks and had a hand in spreading Aids to blacks.

"The situation with Reverend Wright was difficult. I won't lie to you," Obama told a participant at an Indianapolis round-table.

"But frankly what he said over the last few days, and in some of the sermons that have been excerpted, were unacceptable and weren't things that we believed," he said.

"And what we want to do now though is to make sure that this doesn't continue to be a perpetual distraction."

ROILED CAMPAIGN

The Wright controversy roiled Obama's campaign for weeks as he grappled with questions over his ability to attract white working-class voters who lean Democratic but are considered important "swing" voters in the general election in November.

A New York Times/CBS News poll published on Wednesday showed the number of Democratic voters expecting Obama to win his party's nomination had fallen sharply over the past month after the uproar over Wright and Obama's loss of the Pennsylvania primary to Clinton.

According to the poll, 51 percent of Democratic voters said they expected Obama to win the nomination, down from 69 percent a month ago, while 48 percent saw him as the candidate with the best chance of beating McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, down from 56 percent a month ago.

Obama's wife sought to put the issue to rest, declining to respond directly to questions about Wright in an interview with NBC's "Today" show recorded for broadcast on Thursday.

"I think we gotta move forward," Michelle Obama said in an excerpt released by NBC News. "You know, this conversation doesn't help my kids. You know, it doesn't help kids out there who are looking for us to make decisions and choices about how we're going to better fund education."

The Illinois senator who could become America's first black president had attended Wright's Chicago church since 1992.

Clinton made a rare appearance on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" and was asked by conservative host Bill O'Reilly whether she felt sorry for Obama in a taped interview.

"Well, I think that he made his views clear finally, that he disagreed, and I think that's what he had to do," she said, calling Wright's comments "offensive and outrageous".

"And people have to, you know, decide what they believe. And I sure don't believe the United States Government was behind Aids," the New York senator said.

Obama defended his opposition to a temporary suspension of the gasoline tax.

"Here's the truth. It would save the average family 30 bucks over the course of three months - $28. Or more precisely 30 cents a day, which is less than you can buy a cup of coffee for at the 7-Eleven," Obama said.

Suspending the gasoline tax would divert money from the federal highway fund, which the tax finances, and cause job losses in construction, Obama said.

McCain told reporters on his campaign bus that Americans deserved a break from the gasoline tax.

"It's a nice little break for Americans, particularly lower-income Americans who generally speaking drive further and drive older cars, which then increases their costs at the gas pump," the Arizona senator told reporters in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Clinton went on a 45-minute morning commute in a pickup truck with Jason Wilfing, 33, of Plymouth, Indiana. When the pair stopped at a filling station en route to his sheet metal factory job, Clinton paid nearly $64 to fill up half the truck's fuel tank.