Obama won't say sorry to Romney

US President Barack Obama has refused to apologise for accusing Mitt Romney of outsourcing jobs while in charge of Bain Capital, a charge his Republican opponent has dismissed as “false.”

The US presidential race has taken an acrimonious turn in the past week as the wealthy Republican candidate endures a Democratic onslaught over the Bain issue and for squirreling many of his millions away in offshore tax havens.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, called on Friday for an apology for the intensifying character assassination by the Obama campaign and said personal attacks against him were “beneath the dignity of the presidency.”

“We won’t be apologising,” Obama said, according to the transcript of an interview with a local Virginia TV station airing on Sunday.

“Romney claims he’s Mr Fix-It for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely, legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.”
The manner in which Romney acquired his fortune at the helm of Bain, the Boston-based investment firm he founded, has emerged as a major issue during this campaign as Obama tries to paint him as out of touch with ordinary Americans before the November vote.

Romney maintains he quit the day-to-day running of Bain in February 1999 and was not making the decisions when companies it worked with subsequently laid off US workers and “outsourced” jobs to plants in Mexico and China.