WASHINGTON, June 3: Senator Barack Obama has achieved the delegates required to win the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election, campaign officials of his rival Hillary Clinton conceded on Tuesday.

With his nomination almost a certainty, Senator Obama makes history as the first non-white candidate ever to lead a major US party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Senator Clinton, who may finally bow out of the race later in the evening, would also have made history as the first woman to do so.

The historical significance of this election led to a 15-month long bitter campaign between the two candidates that many political analysts said might have hurt the Democratic Party’s otherwise strong possibility of beating the Republicans this time.

Senator Clinton already said farewell to her campaign staff, media reports said as primaries in Montana and South Dakota progressed.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Associated Press news agency reported that the former first lady was all set to make a concession speech, acknowledging that Barack Obama had the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.

But her campaign later issued a statement, indicating that the long and bitter contest between the two rivals for the 2008 US presidential election was far from over. “The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening,” the statement said.

But reports that Mrs Clinton was all set to bow out of the presidential race reappeared after members of her campaign staff said they have received an e-mail from the former first lady telling them their roles would come to an end on Tuesday evening.

All of them had been summoned to New York for a final farewell meeting on Tuesday evening, the reports said. Most campaign staff would be paid through June 15.

On NBC’s “Today Show,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Senator Obama got the majority of convention delegates, “I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee.”

While AP reported that Mr Obama had already collected 2,118 delegates required to clinch the nomination, NBC News reported that he was still 30.5 delegates short of the needed number.

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments.