New Barbs Fly in Clinton-Jackson Feud : Democrats: Risk arises that squabble, which began with remarks about rap singer, will intrude on party convention.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson continued firing verbal shots at each other Friday, escalating a week-old battle that risks extending into next month’s Democratic National Convention.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, suggested that Jackson is using “for his own purposes” the controversy that followed Clinton’s condemnation of a black rapper during a Rainbow Coalition speech last Saturday.

Responding to questions during a televised appearance before a convention of radio talk-show hosts in Washington, Clinton said Jackson’s continuing anger over the incident is “a mystery to me,” especially considering the fact that Jackson seems more angry now than he did a week ago.

“Each day the temperature has been turned up,” Clinton said.

In an interview published Friday in the New York Times, Jackson was quoted as saying Clinton used the speech before his organization to “stage a well-planned sneak attack, without the courage to confront but with a calculation to embarrass.”

Jackson also said Clinton was using the rapper’s comments to advance his presidential campaign with white voters by “containing Jackson and isolating Jackson.” Such a racial appeal, he said, “again exposed a character flaw” in Clinton, a reference to questions about Clinton’s morality that the candidate has worked hard to erase in the minds of voters.

The interview was the latest in a series of efforts by Jackson to exclaim how offended and embarrassed he was by Clinton’s behavior.

In a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times earlier this week, Jackson said Clinton failed to address his proposal for a $500-billion program to aid urban areas at the Rainbow meeting, but chose to engage in “a divisive political maneuver” aimed at him.

“Clinton has a ploy and I have a plan,” he said.

In his speech before Jackson’s organization, Clinton complained that rapper Sister Souljah urged blacks to kill whites instead of killing each other. He also chastised the coalition for recognizing Souljah at a convention which was honoring a white man who filmed the Rodney G. King beating and several blacks who risked their lives to rescue white riot victims.

“After I gave that speech, Jesse Jackson invited me to come back that night and play the saxophone,” Clinton told reporters here Friday. “He went back and had a very cordial meeting with me. So all these discoveries of things after the speech are for his own purposes.”

Clinton said he would “not back down” in his criticism of Souljah. “If Jesse Jackson wants to ally himself with that now and claim that’s the way he felt then, that’s his business,” Clinton said. He added: “Something has happened since the speech. This is not about the speech.”

If Jackson continues drawing attention to his dispute with Clinton, it risks becoming an issue at the July nominating convention, a prospect that Clinton forces had not anticipated.

Many key Democratic Party officials are former Jackson associates, including chairman Ronald H. Brown, but they were hoping for a harmonious meeting that could showcase Clinton. The dispute dominated discussions during convention planning sessions in New York on Friday, where Washington, D.C., Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly was reportedly selected as a keynote speaker.

Some officials feared that Jackson would use delegates pledged to former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. to seek the vice presidential nomination, but Jackson denied he was interested.

Jackson is publicly flirting with the independent candidacy of Texas businessman Ross Perot. But Clinton said he does not believe the controversy with Jackson will cost him black votes. “I’ve got to stand for what I believe and say what I believe and voters either respond one way or the other,” Clinton said.

Times staff writer Geraldine Baum from New York contributed to this story.