MIAMI (Florida) - REPUBLICAN John McCain renewed his attacks on Barack Obama's ties to a 1960s radical here on Wednesday as he targeted voters in the key battleground state of Florida.

Mr McCain, who has refrained from linking Mr Obama to Bill Ayers during recent campaign speeches, went back on the offensive six days before the November 4 polls in an interview with a Spanish-language radio station in Miami.

'I think this whole issue of the relationship with Bill Ayers needs to be known by the American people,' he told Radio Mambi. 'Senator Obama said it was just a guy in the neighbourhood. We know much more than that.'

Mr Ayers was a member of the 'Weathermen' movement, classified by the FBI as a 'domestic terrorist organisation', which carried out a series of attacks to protest the Vietnam War, including on the Pentagon and US Capitol.

Mr Obama met Mr Ayers early in his political career in 1995 but his campaign has said he has not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages with him since Mr Obama became US senator in 2005.

Mr McCain went on to accuse the Los Angeles Times of refusing to publish a video it had obtained of Ayers attending an even with a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

'I don't care much about an old, washed-up unrepentant terrorist, and his wife who was on an FBI top 10 wanted list,' Mr McCain said.

'But we should know about their relationship, including apparently information that is held by the Los Angeles Times concerning an event that Mr Ayers attended with a PLO spokesman.'

Mr McCain appeared to be referring to a Los Angeles Times article from April which said Mr Obama knew and was friendly with Mr Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman, during his academic career in Chicago.

'The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public. I'm not in the business of talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet? 'I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different,' he said, saying Mr Ayers had a 'long relationship' with Mr Obama, who was eight years old when the Weathermen were waging their radical campaign.

'It's not that Barack Obama was eight years old when Mr Ayers was committing acts of terror, it's all about the long relationship on foundations, for his book and launching his political career in Mr Ayers living room,' Mr McCain said. -- AFP