10:32pm UK, Wednesday October 22, 2008

Barack Obama has fought off claims he would be lacking in a global foreign policy crisis by meeting top advisers to bolster his credentials.

Barack Obama has been in Virginia for a rally

Obama, who is due to leave the campaign trail to visit his ill grandmother in Hawaii, said whoever will be the next President will face a tough initiation.

He told journalists: “Whoever is the next President is going to have to deal with a whole host of challenges internationally, and that a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant.

“We have to be careful, we have to be mindful that as we pass the baton in this democracy, that others don’t take advantage of it.

“That is true whether it’s myself or Senator McCain and it has been throughout our history.”

His vice President candidate Joe Biden said this week that the world would quickly throw up a test for Obama, much as president John F Kennedy was tested by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

He said: “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”

Despite Obama’s meeting with national security experts coming hot on the heels of Biden’s comments, the presidential candidate denied there was a connection between the two.

“It was prompted by the fact that, I was focused fairly single-mindedly on the financial crisis,” Obama said, adding that the meeting was planned two to three weeks ago.

Although Obama admitted that Biden may have misspoken: “You know I think that Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes. But I think that his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested regardless of who it is.”

Republicans had tried to portray the comments as a sign that Biden, an old foreign policy hand, did not have confidence in Obama’s leadership skills.

The next President “won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain said at a rally.

The ex-serviceman said: “I sat in the cockpit on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target,” referring to the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.

“I know how close we came to a nuclear war and I will not be a President that needs to be tested. I have been tested. Senator Obama has not.”