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The Presidential candidate also told The Union Leader that until the moment of birth, the government has no right to influence a mother’s decision on whether to have an abortion.

“Life,” he said, “begins with the mother’s decision.”

The retired four-star general said he will discern a prospective judge’s position on abortion not with a litmus test, but by reading his previous decisions to ensure that the judge has never upset existing judicial precedent.

“I don’t believe people whose ideological agenda is to burn the law or remake the law or reshape it should be appointed whether they are from either side,” he said during an interview with editors and a reporter.

“I just want good, solid people with judicial temperament who respect the process of law that we have in America.”

Clark was asked if would appoint or reject a prospective judicial nominee who passed all of Clark’s criteria but happened to be known as pro-life.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It would depend. I don’t have litmus tests. I want a guy who will do judicial precedent.”

But following the interview, Clark telephoned a reporter to clarify.

“I’m not going to be appointing judges who are pro-life,” he said.

Asked again how he will know a nominee’s position on abortion without applying a litmus test, Clark said:

“You just work through what the judge has done and if you find guys who follow judicial and established precedent, you’re not going to find a judge who is pro-life.”

During the interview, Clark said, “It’s a hypothetical that is very unlikely to happen because” a judge who follows precedent “is not going to be the kind of person who is going to use his ideology. He’s not going to have an ideology to advance at the expense of the law.”

Regarding his own views on abortion, Clark said, “I’m not going to get into a discussion of when life begins. I’m in favor of choice, period. Pure and simple.

“I don’t think you should get the law involved in abortion,” he said. “It’s between a woman, her doctor, her faith and her family and her conscience. You don’t put the law in there.”

Clark attributed his recent rise in the polls to an ability to “identify with people,” especially those who are facing financial difficulties. He said that when he was a child, his family was not destitute, but it was poor. He said he had to work his way to a successful career without the benefit of powerful political connections or wealth.

Democratic front-runner Howard Dean’s campaign has been distributing fliers at Clark events calling Clark a Republican.

It refers in part to a May 2001 speech to a group of Arkansas Republicans, in which Clark said he was “glad we’ve got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul O’Neill — people I know very well — our President George W. Bush.”

Yesterday, Clark said he “never thought (Bush) was worthy of praise. I praised the leadership team that was there. I praised the people I knew at the time — Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld — and I just threw in Bush’s name at the end. I didn’t say anything nice about George Bush. I just mentioned George Bush.”

Clark said the military had Osama bin Laden “cornered,” but gave up because “sometime within a couple of weeks of the war (in Afghanistan), the administration decided to go after Saddam Hussein.”