Sen. John Kerry attacked U.S. President George W. Bush for remarks Bush made on whether America could ever be fully safe from a terror attack.

While Bush said homeland security had improved markedly from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he added in the Fox News interview: "Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air. I would hope we could make it a lot more safe by staying on the offensive."

That interview is to be broadcast on Monday.

Kerry said Sunday that Bush's statement echoed one from late August in which he said "I don't think you can win it" -- referring to the war on terror.

"You make me president of the United States, we're going to win the war on terror," Kerry said at an evening rally in Boca Raton, Fla. "It's not going to be up in the air whether or not we make America safe."

Bush has previously derided Kerry for saying he wanted to see terrorism reduced to a nuisance.

In an Oct. 10 New York Times article, Kerry said: "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance.

"As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."

In Almogordo, New Mexico -- site of a major Air Force base -- Bush said Kerry didn't understand the war on terror and had shifted positions on Iraq for purely political reasons.

TV strategy

Bush's campaign team has rolled out some TV ads showing wolves representing terrorists, circling and readying an attack.

"What this ad does is help clarify and discuss in a very revealing way what's at stake in this election -- this is the first presidential election in a post-9/11 world," Dan Bartlett, the White House's communication director, told CNN.

"The president will spend the last week trying to scare you, trying to say, 'There are wolves out there, and only I have the secret formula to solve this.' It's just not going to work," responded Joe Lockhart, a Kerry campaign official.

In one of his campaign's final ads, Kerry will accuse Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney of "misleading Americans about what I said."

The Kerry campaign plans to spend $12 million US on TV ads in 14 states. More than half of that will be spent in just three states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

All three states are up for grabs and are major Electoral College prizes: Florida has 27 votes, Ohio 20 and Pennsylvania 21. Bush won Florida and Ohio in 2000.

For the fourth consecutive Sunday, Kerry spoke at a predominantly African-American church. This time, he was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in heavily Democratic Broward County.

It was the site of some of the 2000 election's worst vote-counting abuses.

Kerry played up the faith factor in his speech, saying his values he practices as a Roman Catholic "will guide me as president."

Some conservative Catholic clerics have said Kerry should be denied Holy Communion for not following church doctrine on things like abortion and stem cell research.

"I love my church, I respect the bishops, but I respectfully disagree," Kerry said.

He also addressed the Republican ads at one stop, saying: "Everything that they are trying to do is scare America. They can't come here and talk to you about all the jobs they've created, because they haven't done it."

Kerry's next stop was New Hampshire, adjacent to his home state of Massachusetts.

Bush campaigned Sunday in New Mexico, a state he lost by 366 votes in 2000. He spent Saturday evening at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Polls showed no significant movement. The race was essentially even nationally and in the most important swing states.

New polls showed the two men running even in Arkansas, Florida and Nevada, with Kerry leading slightly in New Hampshire, Maine and New Jersey.

However, Kerry's team cancelled a Colorado visit this week, leading to speculation he was giving up on winning the Rocky Mountain state.

Clinton to campaign

A high-profile figure will be joining the fight on behalf of Kerry: Former President Bill Clinton will be making appearances in Philadelphia on Monday and Florida on Tuesday.

They will be his first public appearances since undergoing heart bypass surgery in early September.

Asked why he was doing it, Clinton said in a TV interview: "Because it's close and because I think it's important and because the differences between the two candidates and the courses they'll pursue over the next four years are so profound."

Bartlett wished Bush's predecessor well, but worked in a shot.

"The fact that John Kerry's going to have to roll him off the surgery table and onto the campaign trail demonstrates a revealing aspect, that he's underperforming in key parts of his own constituency," he said on Fox News Sunday.

Al Gore, Clinton's vice-president and the Democrats' unsuccessful candidate for president in 2000, also toured African-American churches on Sunday.

In Jacksonville, Fla., Gore urged voters to turn anger into energy at the polls.

With a report from CTV's Alan Fryer and files from The Associated Press