President George W. Bush as a former Texas Air National Guard fighter pilot. (AFP)

Washington, Feb. 11 (Reuters): US President George W. Bush was absent for long periods of his final two years of National Guard duty but met service requirements, according to new records cited by the White House in an effort to refute accusations he shirked Vietnam War-era military obligations.

“These documents clearly show that the President fulfilled his duties,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday during a contentious press briefing as he sought to quell a controversy over whether Bush skipped Guard duty. The issue has sidetracked the Bush team as his re-election effort gets under way.

McClellan said the White House learned on Monday that pay and service records had been found that documented Bush’s service as an F-102 jet pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, which is part of the US part-time military system.

“He (Bush) completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner,” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Albert Lloyd, a personnel specialist, said in a written description of the records that was also issued by the White House.

Although the records, some of which had been previously released, were not fully legible, Lloyd said they reflected that Bush earned the required number of service points. The documents show long gaps in Bush’s Guard service: from May till late October 1972, and from mid-January to early April 1973.

Bush spent part of the autumn of 1972 working on a political campaign in Alabama, but he performed “equivalent duty” while out of Texas, McClellan said.

The records show Bush earned service points and was paid for duty in late October and November of 1972, but officials could not specify which dates he served in Alabama. They also could not explain the gap in 1973.

The records may not end the controversy. The Democratic Party said in a statement: “There is still no evidence that George W. Bush showed up for duty as ordered while in Alabama.” It noted an evaluation report from superiors in Texas said Bush had not been “observed” from April 1972 to May 1973.

The White House later said the evaluation reflected that Bush was no longer serving as pilot during that period, but that Bush recalled serving in a “nonflying status.”

Bush left, with an honourable discharge, eight months shy of the obligatory six years’ service on October 1, 1973, to attend Harvard Business School. The heaviest Guard service in his last two years came in July 1973, when he was paid for 19 days. The National Guard and reserves, rarely called up during the Vietnam War, came to be regarded as “draft havens for relatively affluent young white men,” the Air National Guard says in a history on its Internet site.