ST PAUL, Minnesota: Republican White House hopeful John McCain suspended most of Monday's first day of his nominating convention, as Hurricane Gustav sparked political turmoil as it zeroed in on New Orleans.

Party leaders scrambled to change their plans, keen not to be seen by voters as mounting a celebratory event while a potential natural disaster unfolds on the Gulf Coast, exactly three years after the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.

"I hope and pray we will be able to resume some of our normal operations as quickly as possible," McCain told reporters via a video link from St. Louis, after returning from a tour of relief preparations in Mississippi.

"We're going to suspend most of our activities tomorrow, except for those absolutely necessary," said McCain, who is facing the prospect that his best chance to sell his case to voters will be severely curtailed by the storm.

The Arizona senator said convention delegates needed to "take off our Republican hats, and put on our American hats and we say America, we're with you."

Hurricane Gustav's approach has revived painful memories for Republicans of Katrina which drowned large sections of New Orleans in 2005 and killed 1,800 people in the region.

President George W. Bush took the lion's share of the blame for the botched recovery effort which saw poverty-stricken people abandoned in the city, and the party's brand has still to recover.

McCain's convention manager Rick Davis said the convention would open for just over two hours on Monday, solely to go through procedures necessary under law to begin the process of nominating a president and vice president.

"We will refrain from any political rhetoric which would be traditional in an opening session," Davis said.

"Right now we have a horrible storm bearing down on the Gulf, people should be more concerned about that than a political campaign and that is the way we are going to let the chips fall."

Democratic nominee Barack Obama meanwhile said he would open up his vast donor list to channel money or volunteers to help the recovery efforts, in response to Gustav, which is set to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday.

"We can activate an email list of a couple million people who want to give back," Obama told reporters after attending church in Lima, Ohio.

"I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there if it becomes necessary."

Bush said on Sunday he would skip the planned convention speech, and instead monitor the storm and evacuation efforts in Texas.

"In light of these events I will not be going to Minnesota for the Republican National Convention," Bush said.

"I will travel down to Texas tomorrow to visit with the emergency operations centre in Austin," where Texas and Louisiana responses to Hurricane Gustav are being coordinated.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Vice President Dick Cheney also scrapped his planned speech on Monday night.

McCain and top surrogates earlier took to the talk-show circuit on Sunday to defend his choice of first term Alaska governor Palin as his vice presidential pick, as Democrats warned she was woefully short of experience.

McCain described Palin as a "soul mate" and a reformer.

"She's got the right judgement.

"She's been a commander in chief of the Alaska national guard," said McCain, adding Palin's son, who is in the US Army, is shortly to be deployed to Iraq.

Democrats and some political commentators have savaged McCain's pick of Palin, 44, a mother of five, over her lack of expertise in foreign affairs, saying she is too inexperienced to be a "heartbeat" away from the presidency.

McCain's wife Cindy also defended her husband's decision to turn to Palin, which electrified the crucial conservative powerbase in the Republican Party.

"Remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So it's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here," she said on ABC.

Democrat John Kerry however, said on the same channel that the selection proved McCain was "erratic."

"John McCain's judgment is once again, put at issue, because he's chosen somebody who clearly doesn't meet the national security threshold, who is not ready to be president tomorrow." - AFP/de