The revelation that former senator John Ashcroft has recent links with the militant Gun Owners of America (GOA) group is the latest twist in an increasingly impassioned partisan battle over a nomination which has become a major trial of political strength for Mr Bush.

Even many conservatives consider the GOA to be extremist. After a shooting at an Oregon school in May 1998 in which two pupils were killed by a fellow student, it issued a press release headed: "Lesson of school shootings: More guns needed at schools".

Its director, Larry Pratt, was forced to resign as co-chairman of Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential bid after news leaked of his links with the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and rightwing militia groups. Mr Pratt is also head of an anti-immigrant organisation called English First.

It emerged yesterday that Mr Ashcroft wrote a friendly handwritten letter in March 1998 to Mr Pratt, thanking him for drawing his attention to provisions in a juvenile justice bill which imposed increased penalties for gun law offences. As a result of the GOA's lobbying, Mr Ashcroft, who had originally been a sponsor of the bill, withdrew his support for the legislation.

The letter was sent on Senate notepaper and was addressed "Dear Larry" and signed "Thanks! John".

This is not the only known link between Mr Ashcroft and Mr Pratt. The two men know each another from a secretive but highly influential rightwing religious group called the Council for National Policy, of which Mr Pratt is a member and whose meetings Mr Ashcroft has attended. The CNP's membership is almost a who's who of US conservatism and includes the Republican congressional leaders Senator Trent Lott and Congressman Tom DeLay.

The revelation of the link with Mr Pratt came as two other allegations about Mr Ashcroft's extreme rightwing links also surfaced.

In the first, it was confirmed that Mr Ashcroft took time off from his bitter senatorial contest last September to meet Thomas Bugel, the president of the St Louis chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, to discuss the case of a CCC member, Charles Sell, jailed by federal authorities on charges of conspiring to murder an FBI agent.

The CCC is the successor organisation of the Citizens Council, which led the fight against integration in the South in the 1950s and 60s. The CCC, whose supporters also include Senator Lott and Senator Jesse Helms, opposes interracial marriage and non-white immigration, and believes black people are genetically less intelligent than whites. It is currently mobilising to try to defeat a statewide referendum in Mississippi in April to remove the Confederate flag from the state flag.

Meanwhile, the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University in South Carolina confirmed that it possessed a transcript of reportedly inflammatory remarks made by Mr Ashcroft in a May 1999 speech there. The Senate judiciary committee, where Mr Ashcroft faces confirmation hearings next week, had asked the university to supply a transcript, after rumours surfaced about the speech.

Bob Jones University, whose graduates include the Rev Ian Paisley, was at the centre of a political storm last year when Mr Bush made a speech there to rally conservative support for his presidential bid after he lost the New Hampshire primary to John McCain. The university had a ban on inter-racial dating and supports a doctrinaire anti-Catholic view of the world.

Mr Ashcroft's nomination has become the latest flashpoint of America's political culture wars, with both sides preparing for a major confrontation next week. On Thursday, Mr Bush urged Mr Ashcroft's opponents to "tone down their rhetoric".

Mr Ashcroft spent yesterday trying to shore up support among moderate Republican senators who support abortion rights, an issue he strongly opposes.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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