WASHINGTON – The presidential campaigns ratcheted up their already fierce rhetoric in the battleground states and pulled out their party stars, President Clinton and Mayor Giuliani, as Senator Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of “unbelievable incompetence” for the disappearance in Iraq of hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives.

“My opponent has the wrong strategy for the wrong country at the wrong time,” Mr. Bush shot back after the Democratic nominee pounded him over reports, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, that 380 tons of powerful explosives disappeared from a military installation that had initially been secured by American troops following the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Kerry’s attack came as an ABC/Washington Post poll had the Democratic nominee ahead for the first time, albeit by just one percentage point, a gap well within the margin of sampling error. According to the poll, Mr. Kerry is being backed by voters who fear the country is on the wrong track.

Speaking in Colorado before Mr. Clinton joined him in Philadelphia, Mr. Kerry said the Bush administration had been warned about the vulnerability of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, and he argued the missing explosives could have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

“The unbelievable incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk,” the Massachusetts senator said. “George W. Bush has failed the essential test of any commander in chief to keep America safe.”

The president, who campaigned with Mr. Giuliani throughout the day in Texas, Colorado, and Iowa, criticized the Democratic nominee for misunderstanding the war on terror, saying “Protest is not a policy” when it comes to battling terrorists. He accused Mr. Kerry of not having what it takes to prosecute the anti-terror war.

Appealing directly to Democratic voters, Mr. Bush said: “If you believe America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence in our ideals, I would be honored to have your support and I ask for your vote.”

The president did not address directly the issue of the missing munitions, leaving that to a spokesman, Scott Mc-Clellan, who told reporters on Air Force One that the president wanted to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong. Mr. McClellan highlighted how many weapons had been destroyed in Iraq.

“We have destroyed more than 243,000 munitions,” he said. “We’ve secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed.”

According to Pentagon officials, the military base where the explosives had been stored, Al Qaqaa, was the responsibility of Polish troops deployed in Iraq.

As the presidential candidates battled it out on the campaign trail with Iraq and the war on terror the dominating issues, their supporters, too, locked horns. Both parties intensified a dispute over what will happen in the event of a close election result with the party chairmen on NBC’s “Today” show angrily trading allegations over voter fraud and intimidation.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Edward Gillespie, warned that the Democrats are intent on throwing the election into the courts “no matter what the outcome.” He argued that the deployment by the Democrats of thousands of lawyers in battleground states was intimidation.

“They’re going to try to drag the electoral process into courtrooms across the country in hopes that they’ll get enough liberal activist judges who will overturn the decisions of the voters and impose their own desired outcome on the electorate,” Mr. Gillespie said.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terence McAuliffe, countered by accusing the Republicans of wanting to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters, saying, “We’re going to make sure that every single vote is counted.”

“We know what happened in the 2000 presidential election,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “We’re committed. That will not happen.”

Comments about election night weren’t confined to the party chairmen. Vice President Gore urged black voters in Florida to channel their anger into voting, while it emerged yesterday that at the weekend the wife of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Elizabeth Edwards, apparently implied in remarks to supporters that she thought there could be riots if the Republican ticket is re-elected.

With national opinion polls showing the president nosing ahead while surveys in battleground states have been giving Mr. Kerry a slight edge, the furious and fast-paced exchanges between the campaigns, as well as the enlisting of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani, testified to the two sides’ urgent efforts to find ways to break the neck-and-neck status of the contest.

Both campaigns found some comfort yesterday in opinion polls. The Republicans were buoyed by a Gallup poll that gave the president a lead of five percentage points among likely voters, while Democrats pointed to an ABC/Washington Post poll giving their nominee a 1-point lead. That poll has never before had Mr. Kerry ahead in the race.

Other national polls apart from Gallup had Mr. Bush leading, but again within the margins of error. In few surveys has the president reached 50% against Mr. Kerry, and most have his job approval rating below 50%, a threshold many pollsters believe an incumbent shouldn’t fall below to be confident of re-election.

There was brighter news for Republican strategists with the suggestion by a pollster, John Zogby, that in his tracking surveys the GOP ticket has opened up a lead of 12 percentage points among self-described independent voters.

In his daily commentary, Mr. Zogby concluded that the “momentum is with Bush” but said the race is “far from over.”

Polls in the battleground states provided Democrats with a boost. The electoral scorecard of Hotline, a Capitol Hill political news outlet, showed the Massachusetts senator edging ahead in the scrapping for electoral votes. In Hotline’s tally yesterday Mr. Kerry was leading in 18 states with a total of 243 electoral votes, and Mr. Bush was ahead in 28 states with 234 electoral votes.

New surveys in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania suggested a pickup of momentum by the Democratic nominee. The 61 electoral votes in five states – Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Ohio – remained disputed, the Hotline said.

Interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America” yesterday, Mr. Bush agreed that Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were the key battleground states but he said Michigan was also up for grabs. “I wouldn’t discount the influence of Wisconsin, and Iowa, and Minnesota, New Mexico,” he said. “And I think this is a non-predictable race. I think you’re going to find that there’s a lot of interesting states that – that some have not considered to be in play, in play.”

Kerry strategists hope Mr. Clinton’s appearance on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania and Florida yesterday will energize the Democratic base and assist in boosting the turnout of black voters in those states.

The former president, who said he had cut short his recuperation from heart surgery because of the close race, attracted an enthusiastic crowd of thousands at downtown Philadelphia’s Love Park. They cheered as he walked on stage with Mr. Kerry amid blaring rock music. “If this isn’t good for my heart, I don’t know what is,” Mr. Clinton proclaimed.

Mr. Clinton, who looked thinner than before he underwent quadruple-bypass surgery, told the crowd: “I have been called the Comeback Kid. In eight days, John Kerry’s going to make America the Comeback Country.”

He reserved most of his remarks for domestic issues and compared the economy’s performance during his two terms to its performance in President Bush’s term, focusing on Pennsylvania. “We have just lived through four years of the first job losses in 70 years, record bankruptcies, middle-class incomes declining and poverty going up,” Mr. Clinton said.

The White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, said Mr. Clinton’s return to the election fray illustrated Mr. Kerry’s weakness. “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,” Mr. Bartlett told Fox television.

Lending his clout to the re-election campaign, Mr. Giuliani urged voters in Colorado to back Mr. Bush, saying America should not take a chance on Mr. Kerry, who “can’t seem to make up his mind whether terrorism is serious or a nuisance.” The president won Colorado four years ago, easily beating Mr. Gore, but the state is now said to be competitive.

The Republican campaign will seek to win votes in the swing state of Ohio this weekend when another highly popular Republican, Governor Schwarzenegger of California, is scheduled to campaign with Mr. Bush.