Washington - By bringing Joe Biden into his presidential bid, Barack Obama has taken a major step toward shoring up what many believe is a key weakness running against John McCain: lack of foreign policy experience.

Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware and venerable chairman of the upper house's Foreign Relations Committee, is an old hand at international relations and will likely appeal to voters sceptical of Obama's foreign affairs credentials.

Biden, 65 and a lawyer by trade, was an early candidate in the Democratic primary but dropped out after a poor showing in the first contest in Iowa. His name had for weeks been tossed around as a possible vice presidential candidate.

A Vietnam War veteran, McCain, 71, has served in Congress since the early 1980s and is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He has long been a leading congressional voice on foreign policy.

Polls show American voters have much more confidence in McCain to run the country's foreign policy agenda than Obama, who served in the Illinois legislature before winning his Senate seat in the 2004 election.

But Obama, 47, hopes Biden can help close that gap. Biden voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq but became a chief critic of President George W Bush's Iraq policy and management of the war.

During his brief presidential bid, Biden called for establishing a weak central Iraqi government and three highly autonomous Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions to reduce ethnic and religious tension.

This month, as Russia and Georgian forces were locked in battle, Biden traveled to Tbilisi at the invitation of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili

Biden might help on foreign policy, but it will be a challenge for the Obama camp to blend their message of "change" with adding someone to the ticket with a lengthy tenure in Washington. He was elected to the Senate in 1972, when Obama was
11 years old. Biden brings no executive experience to the ticket, having spent his entire political career in the legislature.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has a working-class family background and ties to organized labour. That could help Obama with the blue-collar demographic he has struggled to win over to date.

Biden has overcome sad personal tragedies. His wife, Neilia, and 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident one month after his election.

He considered relinquishing his seat but agreed not to at the behest of the Democratic leadership. Biden took his first oath of office at the hospital beside his two sons, who were still recovering from the accident. He married Jill Tracy Jacobs five years later and went on to father a fourth child.

In 1988 he faced another crisis, when he was rushed into surgery to treat two brain aneurysms.

During his career, he has been known for his witty sense of humor, but some comments have gotten him into trouble. As he announced his presidential bid, he referred to Obama as a "clean" African American candidate, sparking protests from some in the black community.

Early in the campaign he questioned whether Obama was aptly experienced to serve in the White House, saying the presidency is not "on-the-job training."

Biden also ran for president in 1988, but dropped out after admitting he had plagiarized a speech by Neil Kinnock, who at the time was the leader of Britain's Labour Party.

Biden employed some humor to quell the uproar. He flew to London carrying bound copies of all of his speeches and presented them to Kinnock.

"I told him he was welcome to use them whenever he liked, with or without attribution," Biden said. (dpa)