For the second straight day, Gore cut short a campaign trip to attend emergency White House meetings about the apparent terrorist bombing of a U.S. Navy warship in Yemen and two weeks of escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

"This is a time of great tension," the vice president told 2,000 supporters gathered among the falling, golden leaves of a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, park. "It is a time when our country's leadership is needed. And, as a nation, we're going to stand together and do everything we can to promote peace and security and the right outcome."

On this, both candidates agreed. "It is important for our administration to continue to seek calm and peace in the Middle East," Bush said in suburban Detroit.

Polls show the race tied, and analysts expect little to change while voters remain transfixed by the twin crises. With Election Day less than a month away, both candidates struggled for attention against the backdrop of international tensions and an unstable stock market. A sample of their efforts:

• Gore ripped into Bush's record as governor of Texas, accusing him of presiding over a state with the worst record for health coverage in the nation. He was joined by the Republican mayor of Cedar Rapids, who questioned Bush's intellectual heft. "I wanted a president who has the intelligence to understand the issues," said Mayor Lee Clancey.

• Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman went to southern Texas, where he toured a home with limited water supply, plywood walls and roosters walking the floor with Irene Gonzalez' eight children. "This place cries out for help," he said, blaming Bush for the condition of Texas colonias. The GOP campaign said $600 million in improvements were approved under Bush for the Texas border.

• Bush toured an automobile plant in Pontiac, Mich., and warned voters in this tossup state that Gore's environmental policies would cost them jobs. "In speeches, he calls auto workers his friends. But in his book, he declares that the engines that power your cars are his enemy," Bush said, reading from Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance," as the crowed booed Gore. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Lieberman dutifully called Bush's charge false and "scare tactics."

Gore canceled a meeting with Arab-Americans here to attend White House meetings. Democrats are concerned that troubles in the Middle East, Gore's vocal support of Israel and even Lieberman's Jewish faith have hurt him with Michigan's growing Arab-American community. Sensitive to the issue, Gore was planning to meet with Arab-American leaders at the White House.

The trip to Washington served as a reminder of the vice president's institutional advantage over Bush on foreign policy issues.

Bush knew the best way to get attention was to talk about foreign affairs. Thus, he criticized Gore over a U.S.-Russian agreement allowing the delivery of Russian arms to Iran through 1999. "I am troubled that any agreement was made that would allow arms to be sold to Iran," he said in an interview with The AP.

Gore brokered the deal in 1995, allowing Moscow to fulfill existing sales contracts. Russia promised to make no future sales. In return, Washington agreed not to seek penalties against Moscow under a 1992 law that bans such sales to nations that sponsor terrorism. Moscow has continued to supply Tehran with arms, over the protests of the Clinton-Gore administration, The New York Times reported Friday.

Crossing the state to Pontiac, Bush condemned Gore for dipping into the strategic oil reserve last month. He said action lessened the nation's oil supply and made America more reliant on Middle East products.

"Every barrel released today is one less barrel available to protect us against threats to our security -- threats that are becoming more vivid with this week's turmoil and violence in the Middle East," Bush said. "The current crisis in the Middle East underscores the danger of American reliance on Saddam Hussein's oil."

Former President Bush and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, now George W. Bush's running mate, have faced criticism over the years for not doing more to remove Saddam from power after the Persian Gulf War.

Gore tapped the reserve to lower gas and home heating oil costs, saying the action would not impair the nation's ability to weather an oil crisis.

Cheney said administration energy policies are responsible for high gas and home heating prices. "The spike in oil prices -- all that ties into the proposition that if you have a major war ... or terrorist attack on U.S. facilities, everybody gets nervous about the possibility of some kind of interruption of the flow of oil into the United States," Cheney said in Wisconsin.

A new poll by Marketing Resource Group showed the Michigan race a dead heat, with Bush at 42 percent and Gore at 41 percent and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader getting 4 percent of the vote. Gore was up by 6 percentage points in the group's Aug. 28 poll.

The survey reflects Bush's gains in several battleground states this month, and underscores the importance of the candidates' third and final debate on Tuesday in St. Louis.

The foreign policy crises are a new wild card in the race. Neither campaign knows whether voters will grow less confident of the state of the country -- a dynamic that would help Bush argue for change -- or more eager for stability, which could benefit the more-experienced Gore.

"One thing we know," said Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus, "is that voters are glued to the Middle East, not politics."