As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were kissing and making up last Friday, Bill Clinton might have had other ideas, according to a report in The (London) Telegraph.

The paper reports that even as the former president and the current presumptive Democratic nominee prepare to meet to make their own amends, Bill Clinton reportedly told close friends Obama can “kiss my ass” to get his support.

The paper cited an anonymous Democratic source who provided the quote. That source also said Clinton is not making the primary effort to bridge the chasm between himself and Obama.

“He’s saying he’s not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote, ‘kiss my ass,’ close quote, if he wants his support.

“You can’t talk like that about Obama — he’s the nominee of your party, not some house boy you can order around.

“Hillary’s just getting on with it and so should Bill.”

Bill Clinton has more recently cooled his rhetoric toward the de facto party leader, but he has publicly expressed his anger over being painted as a racist and race-baiter while his wife was campaigning against Obama.

In April, Bill Clinton had a fiery exchange with a public radio reporter, who asked him about a controversial statement he made on South Carolina on the day the state held its primary, and whether he regretted comparing Obama’s campaign to Jesse Jackson’s campaigns.

Clinton responded: “No, I think that they played the race card on me, and we now know from memos in the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along.

“Do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you’ve really got to go some (distance) to portray me as a racist,” Clinton said, adding that he has an office in Harlem, and Jackson told him personally he was not offended.

Following Hillary Clinton’s public display of unity with Obama last week, Bill Clinton and Obama are expected to meet in the coming days.

SAN FRANCISCO – Bill Clinton has accepted an invitation to speak at the state Democratic convention in San Jose next weekend.State party Chair Art Torres said Friday that the former president will also meet privately with party leaders and officials known as “superdelegates” that could determine whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.

An estimated one-third of California’s 65 named superdelegates remain uncommitted.

Torres says he’s also invited Obama and his wife Michelle to speak at the convention, but hasn’t heard back yet.

The three-day convention is not open to the public.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

KINGSTREE, S.C. — Former President Bill Clinton defended himself Wednesday against accusations that he and his wife had injected the issue of race into the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina, and he accused Senator Barack Obama of Illinois of putting out a “hit job” on him.

Scolding a reporter, Mr. Clinton said the Obama campaign was “feeding” the news media to keep issues of race alive, obscuring positive coverage of the presidential campaign here of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“They know this is what you want to cover,” Mr. Clinton told a CNN reporter in Charleston, in an apparent reference to the Obama campaign.

“Shame on you,” the former president added.

The sharp comments again drew extraordinary attention to Mr. Clinton as he campaigned in South Carolina in his wife’s stead. Mrs. Clinton spent parts of the day in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, looking ahead to the multistate presidential nominating contests on Feb. 5.

Mr. Clinton’s remarks were delivered in an even tone but heightened the tension between the Obama and Clinton camps. Mr. Clinton dredged up complaints about voting in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, where Mr. Obama won more delegates but Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote, and continued to mull publicly the role that race could play in the primaries.

That issue has permeated the campaign here in advance of the Democratic primary on Saturday, in which at least half the voters are expected to be black.

Mr. Clinton also suggested in public remarks that his wife might lose here because of race. Referring to her and Mr. Obama, he said, “They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender, and that’s why people tell me that Hillary doesn’t have a chance to win here.”

Later in the day, he said that if Mr. Obama won the Democratic nomination, he would “do what I can to help him become president.” Mr. Clinton said he was “very impressed with the nonracial appeal” of Mr. Obama.

At about the same time, the Clinton campaign began running a radio commercial about Mr. Obama, which replayed Mr. Obama’s words from a recent interview with The Reno Gazette-Journal: “The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years.”

“Really?” a voice-over in the Clinton commercial says. “Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today?”

In his interview, Mr. Obama did not specify any particular idea and did not say he supported any of them, though Mrs. Clinton’s commercial strongly implies that he did.

The Obama campaign called Mrs. Clinton’s commercial “dishonest,” and Mr. Obama broadly implied at campaign appearances that the Clintons were misleading voters, though he did not mention the Clintons by name.

Mr. Obama further responded with his own radio advertisement, saying that it was Mrs. Clinton who had frequently sided with the Republicans on issues like the Iraq war and the North American Free Trade Agreement. “She’ll say anything, and change nothing,” the commercial said. “It’s time to turn the page.”

Mr. Obama spent the day in South Carolina, though his campaign was also preparing for Feb. 5 by expanding its television advertising into several states.

In Sumter, Mr. Obama specifically distanced himself from the Republicans. “No Bush, No Cheney, No Sense,” he chanted at a packed community center as the crowd repeated it so that everyone thundered together.

Mr. Obama often talks about his appeal to both independents and Republicans, and on Tuesday he said he wanted to work with Republicans, but that other politicians — he did not mention Mrs. Clinton by name — had distorted his statements. “Part of what happens in Washington is that folks will try to twist your words around,” he said.

“They’re trying to bamboozle you,” he said to the overwhelmingly black crowd. “It’s the same old okey-doke.”

Mr. Clinton’s remarks about the media, which the Clinton campaign has said is biased against them, came in response to a question from a CNN reporter in Charleston. The reporter told him that Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina and an Obama supporter, had called the Clinton campaign in South Carolina “reprehensible.” CNN also told him that Mr. Harpootlian had compared their tactics to those of Lee Atwater, the Republican operative who used racial politics and wedge issues.

“I never heard a word of public complaint when Mr. Obama said Hillary was not truthful,” Mr. Clinton said. “He had more pollsters than she did. When he put out a hit job on me at the same time he called her the senator from Punjab, I never said a word. And I don’t care about it today.” (The reference to the senator from Punjab was in a memo by an Obama campaign staff member.)

Mr. Clinton said no one in the audience in Charleston had asked him about how race was being used in the campaign. “They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover,” he said. “What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.”

In response, Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said: “At the end of the day, we trust in the wisdom of the people of South Carolina, and we won’t be deterred from the challenges facing their lives by the Clinton campaign’s sideshows.”