Has Clinton closed door on running for president?

[July 23, 2009]  TOKYO (AP) -- Hillary for president, again?

She says it's unlikely, but in a Thai television interview Wednesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't completely close that door.

Asked whether she still aspired to be the first female American president, she said, "That's not anything I'm at all thinking about," adding that she is "100 percent focused" on her role as President Barack Obama's secretary of state.

So has she given up hope of getting to the White House?

"I don't know, but I doubt very much that anything like that will ever be part of my life," replied the former first lady and former U.S. senator.

Pressed further, Clinton said, "Well, I'm saying no because I have a very committed attitude to the job I have. And so that's not at all on my radar screen."

She also dismissed talk in Washington that because her public profile has dipped in recent weeks she may be playing a lesser role in the Obama administration.

Such talk, she said, began when she fell and broke her right elbow on June 17 and was forced to cancel two major overseas trips. Suddenly people in Washington were asking, "Where is she? She's gone," Clinton said.

"Not to be taken seriously," she said of the speculation.

No one should be surprised that Obama has held the spotlight on foreign policy, Clinton told her interviewers. After all, he is the president.

"I tried to be the president and was not successful," she lamented.

One interviewer told Clinton that for a while during last year's race for the Democratic presidential nomination he thought she was going to win.

"So did I," she replied.

[Associated Press; By ROBERT BURNS]

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