KEENE, N.H. — Bill Clinton accused President George W. Bush on Friday of having “forgotten about our hunt for bin Laden,” and told Newsday the president’s Iraq policy had spawned swarms of new terror recruits.

Speaking during his first New Hampshire appearance with his wife, Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former president agreed with a recent intelligence report indicating the al-Qaida terror organization has regrouped to pre-Sept. 11 levels.

“Our defenses are better, but we may have more people trying to pierce them,” Clinton said as he signed autographs outside Keene High School, the first of three campaign stops in the Granite State.

“I agree with what Hillary said — that the homeland is not safe enough but that it’s safer from attack than it was pre-9/11 because there are so many people out there around the world are cooperating with us,” he added. “That’s the good news … the bad news is that there’s no question that our policy in Iraq and the fact that we pursued it virtually alone has generated a lot more recruiting from the people who don’t like us or the British.”