ST. PAUL - THE Republican convention to nominate John McCain, scaled back for Hurricane Gustav then sideswiped by disclosures about his surprise and little-known running mate, looked Tuesday for ways to regain its partisan bearings and fortify the Arizona senator for the fall campaign against Democrat Barack Obama.

While Monday's opening program at the Republican National Convention was shorn of political rhetoric out of deference to Americans caught in the hurricane, party officials said they were planning to resume normal convention activities on day two, likely to include a keynote address by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Aides said Mr McCain probably would deliver his nomination acceptance speech in person as scheduled on Thursday.

White House officials held out the possibility President George W. Bush would make a televised address to the convention from Washington. The decision on Mr Bush's role, if any, appeared to rest with the McCain campaign, which has tried to distance the White House hopeful from the unpopular president.

Mr Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney cancelled their appearances even before Republican convention organisers decided to scale back the first day's events. Mr Bush went to Texas to be nearer hurricane relief efforts.

Just hours before the Republican political festival opened in the Minnesota capital, Alaska Govenor Sarah Palin disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

It also was revealed on Monday that an attorney had been hired to represent Palin in a state ethics probe and that her husband, Todd, had been arrested for drunken driving two decades ago.

The man who led Mr McCain's vice presidential search team said he thought everything that had come up as a possible red flag during the background check had now been made public.

'I think so,' Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. told The Associated Press. 'Yes. I think so. Correct.'

Hurricane Gustav, which pounded ashore 1,600 kilometres to the south, provided some distraction from the news surrounding Mrs Palin. Yet initial reports showed the storm was not as devastating as feared, and attention quickly returned to the 44-year-old mother of five, known as a maverick who has routinely challenged the Alaska state political machinery.

Gustav, while reminding Americans of how the Bush administration bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago, gave Mr McCain's Republicans a chance to show they could do better this time as they pushed hard to strengthen the relief effort.

Convention organisers stripped out pageantry normally attached to the opening day of a political convention, and Republicans scaled back attacks on Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Instead, first lady Laura Bush and her would-be successor, Cindy McCain, provided the day's star power, appealing for delegates to open their wallets to help those caught in Gustav's path.

'This is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats,' said Cindy McCain, reprising a line her husband used on Sunday.

The hurricane hit the heart of Louisiana's oil and fishing industries but appeared to spare New Orleans the catastrophic flooding of Katrina.

Its political impact was unclear. For a day at least, the storm denied Mr McCain the nonstop news coverage that Mr Obama enjoyed during the Democrats' four-day convention last week in Denver, Colorado. -- AP