OTTAWA (CP) - The Bush administration issued a sharp, public rebuke Tuesday to Prime Minister Paul Martin for dragging the Canada-U.S. relationship into federal electoral politics.

Ambassador David Wilkins' unprecedented, mid-campaign sortie drew an immediate, flag-waving riposte from Martin, who came to office in 2003 promising a more mature relationship with Washington. "I will defend the Canadian position and I will defend our values and I will defend our interests against anybody," the prime minister said on the campaign trail in Surrey, B.C.

Wilkins' diplomatic message was about as subtle as a sledgehammer, suggesting maturity in cross-border relations remains in short supply two years after Martin became prime minister.

"It may be smart election-year politics to thump your chest and criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner constantly," Wilkins said in a speech to the Canadian Club at the historic Chateau Laurier Hotel, next door to Parliament Hill.

With Jonathan Fried, Martin's chief foreign policy advisor, and Peter Harder, the powerful deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, seated to his right, Wilkins took issue with the barrage of criticism that has been directed at U.S. policy by Martin and his Liberal cabinet.

It appears that Martin's campaign team, which is often given to bare-knuckle politics, considers a dust-up with the Bush White House as ballot-box gold.

The prime minister used Wilkins' rebuke Tuesday to insist that he hasn't made American relations an election issue - even as he repeated his criticisms of American policy on softwood lumber and global warming.

"If the thesis of Mr. Harper is that the only way to have good relations with the United States is to concede everything to the United States, then I do not accept that at all," said Martin.

If anything, the Conservative leader has been doing everything possible to distance himself from Washington after feeling the sting of Liberal claims in the 2004 election that he was too closely allied with the Bush Republicans.

Harper sent an open letter this week to the right-wing Washington Times newspaper, repudiating much of a recent glowing commentary that painted a potential Harper election win as "a rare foreign event that manages to put a smile" on President Bush.

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