WASHINGTON, Dec 9, 2007 (AFP) - Top Republican White House hopefuls were forced on the defensive over their pasts Sunday with Mike Huckabee grilled about his 1992 belief that AIDS patients should be quarantined.
New attention is being paid to Huckabee's record as the wisecracking, avuncular Baptist pastor surges in the polls, less than a month before Iowa kicks off the party nominating contests.
National Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani meanwhile refused to renounce his lucrative consulting business despite questions over a potential conflict of interest with some of the foreign states it has represented.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, former Arkansas governor Huckabee said he would probably "say things a little differently" now than when he was asked his views on AIDS 15 years ago.
"But what I'm not going to do is to go back and now try to change every story I've ever had. I'm going to simply say that that was exactly what I said. I don't run from it, don't recant from it," he said.
As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee told The Associated Press that if the US government wanted to deal effectively with AIDS, "we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
The Baptist minister was also quoted as calling homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle."
Speaking on Fox, Huckabee insisted that there were legitimate concerns in the early 1990s about whether AIDS could be spread by casual contact, despite US government advice as early as 1985 that this was impossible.
Huckabee was also grilled over his ignorance, more than 24 hours after it was released, of a new US intelligence appraisal last week that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
The Republican candidate had said he was too busy on the campaign trail to learn immediately of Tuesday's National Intelligence Estimate, a change of heart by the spy agencies that contradicted bellicose US talk on Iran.
"It shows more than anything not what I didn't know, but what our own intelligence community didn't know," Huckabee said.
A Newsweek survey Friday suggested that Huckabee has opened up a gaping lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, of 39 percent to 17 percent, ahead of the state's nominating caucuses on January 3.
Romney delivered a landmark speech on Thursday, asking Americans not to reject him over his Mormon religion, partly motivated by Huckabee's strong support among crucial evangelical voters in Iowa.
The candidates' personal and political beliefs will get another airing on Wednesday at the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
While leading in national Republican polls, Giuliani trails badly in Iowa and the other early-voting state of New Hampshire, but is banking on carrying bigger states such as New York, Florida and California.
The former New York mayor, interviewed on NBC television Sunday, faced new questions over his private-sector interests through his stewardship of the security consultancy Giuliani Partners.
Its clients have included the Gulf country of Qatar, which is a US ally but has been accused of sheltering Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda figure suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Citing confidentiality agreements, Giuliani refused to release a list of the firm's clients, and said he was no longer involved in its day-to-day affairs.
Asked if he would sever all ties to the consultancy, he said: "No, I'm an owner."
Giuliani said that in due course, he would provide the legally required financial disclosure of his involvement with the firm "and then we will take a look and see should we go beyond that."
Giuliani was also questioned anew about his ties to former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was formally indicted last month on charges of tax evasion and corruption.
And he insisted that he acted on the recommendations of New York police, following accusations that he hid thousands of dollars in travel and security costs during an extra-marital affair with his now wife.
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