(Des Moines, IA) While speaking with reporters Wednesday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore said it was time to put the brakes on negative campaigning, but later in the same call Gore lobbed a volley at rival Bill Bradley.

“It’s always good to focus on the positive and in the remaining days before the Caucuses here in Iowa, that’s what I’m going to do,” Gore said during a telephone conference call with Iowa political reporters.

Gore was asked, though, about a campaign memo which assailed several of Bradley’s voted on rural health care initiatives.

“When we proposed to reduce the size of a tax cut for the wealthy adn put the money into Medicare for rural hospitals instead, every single democrat supported us on it, except for Senator Bradley, and I don’t know what his theory was on that,” Gore said.

Gore’s own Senate vote on a tobacco tax increase which would have helped financed Medicare was the subject of a Bradley’s attack yesterday.