Hillary Clinton has accused Barack Obama's campaign of “deliberately distorting” her views on Martin Luther King and implied that her rival, seeking to become America's first black president, was injecting the issue of race into an already highly charged election contest in the Deep South.

Her comments came after days of bitter controversy in which some black leaders have claimed that she had diminished Dr King's role in the Civil Rights struggle, a particularly incendiary subject in the run-up to the South Carolina Democratic primary on January 26, in which about half the voters are expected to be black.

Mrs Clinton said today: “This is . . . an unfortunate storyline that the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully. They've been telling people, in a very selective way, what the facts are.”

In an interview shortly before her unexpected comeback in New Hampshire last week, she had referred to Mr Obama's repeated comparisons of himself to Dr King and John F. Kennedy as she sought to emphasise her experience in bringing about change. She said: “Dr King's dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” She added: “It took a president to get it done.”

Mr Obama, whose campaign has since distributed a dossier of other comments that might be construed as racially insensitive, today responded swiftly to her complaint. “The notion that this is somehow our doing is ludicrous,” he said. “What we saw this morning was why the American people are tired of Washington politicians and the games they play.”

In a interview with Meet the Press on NBC today, Mrs Clinton responded forcefully. “Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign is deliberately distorting this. It is such an unfair and unwarranted attempt to, you know, misinterpret and mischaracterise what I've said.”

Mrs Clinton was then confronted with a report in the largest newspaper in South Carolina, suggesting that her remarks had “generated resentment” among some African Americans. “There's not one shred of truth in what you've just read,” she said. She said that Dr King was “one of the people that I admire most in the world”.

She was also forced to defend her husband, who has angered black leaders by apparently dismissing Mr Obama's candidacy as “the biggest fairytale I've ever seen”. Mrs Clinton said: “The point that Bill was making has been unfairly and inaccurately characterised.” Mr Clinton has also been busy trying to limit any fallout, phoning into black radio stations over the weekend to praise his wife's rival and point out that his comments had been aimed at the lack of scrutiny of Mr Obama's position on the Iraq war.

“This is what happens any time anyone tries to question a statement or a position of Senator Obama. The response is, 'You're attacking me personally',” he said.

Mrs Clinton showed no sign today of letting up in her criticism of Mr Obama for making his early opposition to the war a cornerstone of a campaign that reminds voters repeatedly that she supported the invasion of Iraq in the Senate.

“The whole story of Senator Obama's campaign has been premised on a speech he gave in 2002. By 2003, that speech was off his website.” By September 2004, Mrs Clinton said, Mr Obama was not sure whether he would have voted against the war if he had been in the Senate at the time, and when he did enter the chamber he did not make a speech opposing the war for another 18 months.

She said that Mr Obama had consistently voted to fund the war, adding: that if his campaign “is premised on that speech - it doesn't add up”. Even while she was speaking, however, her rival's aides were firing off rebuttals to reporters, titled “Obama Consistently Opposed the Iraq War”.

She said of Mr Obama's soaring rhetoric: “When the cameras are gone, and the lights are off, how do you transform those words into deeds?”

Asked about her tearful moment in New Hampshire, she said she was taken aback by a voter asking about her well-being. “It was a moment of real emotional connection,” she said.

Asked to cite the greatest adversity in her public life, she responded with a thinly disguised reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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