Washington, March 4: A daring cross-border political raid by Canada into US presidential politics, in single-minded pursuit of Ottawa’s interests in Washington, may stop Barack Obama’s steady winning streak today and revive Hillary Clinton’s imperilled candidacy.

It is being described here as “Naftagate” and involves a communication from the Canadian consulate in Chicago that was leaked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government in Ottawa, which would like Republican John McCain to be the next US President.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) is a hot potato in today’s primaries because thousands of US jobs, especially in Ohio, have been lost to Mexico after the largest trade bloc in the world in GDP terms was created in 1994.

Nafta’s members are the US, Canada and Mexico: the last two are perceived here as the unfair beneficiaries of the free trade bloc at the expense of the US.

Obama has been hitting out at Nafta on the campaign trail leading to worries in Canada and Mexico that if elected President, he would re-negotiate the agreement to the advantage of American workers or leave it altogether.

Naftagate is about a meeting last month between Austan Goolsbee, a senior economic adviser in Obama’s campaign and George Rioux, Canada’s consul general in Chicago, at which Rioux was probing the Democratic front-runner’s intentions about the (Nafta).

After the meeting, Joseph De Mora, an economic affairs officer at the consulate, communicated to his government in Ottawa that Goolsbee had assured the Canadians behind closed doors that “much of the (Obama) rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political manoeuvring than policy.”

Goolsbee emphasised that Obama's stump speeches against Nafta “should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans”.

In Canada’s parliament yesterday, Opposition members accused the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Ian Brodie of leaking the document and urged Harper to dismiss his aide.

Harper “regretted the fact that information has come out that would imply that Senator Obama has been saying different things in public than in private. The government of Canada does not condone this and certainly regrets any implication”.

Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton and the presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain immediately pounced on the controversy putting Obama on the defensive on the eve of primary voting in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Obama’s problem is that he has been campaigning on the theme of change from the sleazy ways of established politicians in Washington.

The allegation of doublespeak and hypocrisy implicit in Naftagate has wiped off some of the sheen from Obama’s image as being a different kind of presidential candidate.