Republican Mitt Romney, a former one-term governor with a thin foreign-policy resume, argued Wednesday that the Senate tenures of his top Democratic presidential rivals don't automatically make them qualified to address world affairs.

''Sitting on committees in Washington does not guarantee that someone has the skills to solve the problems on the international stage,'' Romney told The Associated Press in a telephone interview while campaigning in Midland, Texas.

He suggested that his comments did not apply to GOP opponent John McCain, a four-term Arizona senator who Romney said has ''led in many ways,'' including as the head of a Naval squadron in Vietnam. Rather, he singled out Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

''In those three cases, you have people who have never really led or managed a substantial enterprise. They learned how to speak well and they learned how to ask good questions at hearings and how to receive briefings. But the role of being a leader and manager of a state, of a city, of an Olympics, of a business, of an enterprise is entirely different than sitting in a hearing chair."