Washington  - As Barack Obama picked up support from another half dozen or so of the Democratic party elite this week, the attacks by Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started shifting away from each other and toward the Republican candidate.

Senator Clinton, 60, has one last victory in her sights - West Virginia on Tuesday, where she is expected to beat Senator Obama, 46, by two-to-one among the conservative, working-class and largely white voters who dominate the state.

But she faces huge odds in the other five contests that remain - Oregon, Kentucky, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota.

Clinton has refused calls to step out of the race in the interest of party unity, although Obama now has 161 more delegates in his pocket of the 2,025 delegates needed to seal the party's nomination.

On Saturday, while insisting she had "what it takes" to beat Republican candidate John McCain, 71, she also assured fans in West Virginia that come November, Democrats "will have a unified party and we will stand together and defeat John McCain and go on to take the White House."

Obama, who has apparently offered an olive branch to Clinton and suggested he would help her pay off her campaign debt, echoed the tone.

"I know there are Democrats who are concerned about whether women will vote for Barack, and blacks will vote for Hillary," Obama told an audience in Oregon. "I know there's a lot of concern about division. One thing's for certain - this party will be unified by next November."

After Obama's strong popular vote win in North Carolina this past week, he made huge strides among the elite delegates - the 795 so- called super-delegates who include elected officials, Democratic National Committee members and even former presidents.

As of Saturday, Obama had picked up six to nine new super delegate votes, claiming about 270 while Clinton claimed 272 by week's end, according to RealClearPolitics. com on Saturday.

That meant Clinton had lost the 15-super-delegate lead she had going into last Tuesday's votes in North Carolina and Indiana. She had hoped that strong showings during May would persuade others to line up behind her and tilt the race in her favour.

But super-delegates have indicated they will not defy the wishes of the popular primary votes, and in the end are expected to fall in behind the top candidate.

McCain has already begun zeroing in on Obama, giving the African- American Democrat a taste of what to expect in the final battle for the White House.

Trying to portray Obama as naive about foreign policy, McCain resurrected comments by militant Islamist Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef who has approved of Obama's candidacy for not trying to sound like a "friend of Israel." McCain also has zeroed in on Obama's indication he would be willing to sit down and talk to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In a fundraising letter last month, a McCain spokesman wrote that America does not need the kind of change that "wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad."

On Friday, McCain, referring to recent remarks by the Iranian president, charged that Obama "wants to sit down and have negotiations and discussions with the person who just yesterday called Israel a quote 'stinking corpse'."

Clinton says she should be the party's presidential candidate because she has been through the mill with the Republicans and their attack strategy during her husband Bill's presidency, when the Republican machine was aimed at them.

"I have taken on the Republicans before and I have won," she told supporters in West Virginia. "I believe I have what it takes to stand up and fight."

McCain's challenge is finding a way to disengage himself from the increasingly unpopular presidency of George W Bush.

On Saturday, Obama charged that McCain was "running for George Bush's third term."

"John McCain looks at George Bush's economic record and says, 'I see great progress'," Obama said.

That attitude, Obama said, ignores the fact that more than 1 million US citizens are facing foreclosure on their homes amidst the subprime mortgage crisis, and that 260,000 people lost jobs so far this year. (dpa)