ALBANY – The state Democratic Committee yesterday removed re-edited Associated Press articles from its Web site, a week after the party accused a GOP candidate of doctoring news stories for his Web site.

Democratic officials called the edited AP articles “excerpts.” It said the dustup was the result of a misunderstanding in January after the committee issued a press release that included an AP story about a Republican gubernatorial candidate, William Weld.

“Earlier this year, the AP called the state party and said they were unhappy with the fact that the state party was placing their stories on their site in full,” a Democratic strategist, Howard Wolfson, said.

“As a result the state party was told – my understanding, I didn’t have the conversation – that they could excerpt the stories instead,” he said on WROWAM. “So, the stories were excerpted, primarily from the bottom.”

Articles it posted from newspapers were not edited.

An assistant general counsel for the AP, David Tomlin, said the AP objects to any republication of its stories to support candidates or causes. Quotation of brief excerpts may sometimes qualify as fair use under copyright law, but the state committee’s postings went way beyond that, he said.

In one AP article about Senator Clinton criticizing the Bush administration, the committee used four of the first five paragraphs of the 24-paragraph story and cut out this third paragraph:

“The senator, who is up for re-election this year and considered a potential White House candidate in 2008, said Republicans won the last two elections on the issue of national security, adding ‘they’re doing it to us again.'”

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and state Democrats have steadfastly avoided mention of 2008, maintaining she is focused solely on representing New York in the Senate and winning re-election this year. Other articles on the committee’s site include references to her possible 2008 presidential run.

An article posted Tuesday about Mr. Weld was headlined: “AP: Scandal at trade school casts a shadow over N.Y. governor’s race.” The posted story was four paragraphs long followed by the phrase: “(excerpted per AP policy).”

The Democrats’ version ended right before the article reported: “Weld has said he knew of no illegal activity at the college and has offered to help with the investigation.” That posting came a week after the state party began criticizing Mr. Weld for posting only positive excerpts of a New York Times article.