The usually publicly calm US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton snapped at a Congolese student yesterday when asked about her husband's views on a foreign policy issue.
"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?," she replied angrily when a university student in Kinshasa asked what former president Bill Clinton thought about a deal between China and Democratic Republic of Congo. "My husband is not secretary of state, I am."
"If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion, I am not going to be channelling my husband," she added, without commenting further on the infrastructure-to-minerals deal that has raised some IMF concerns.
An aide to Mrs Clinton said State Department officials on the trip listened later to a tape of the question and determined it had been translated correctly. Afterwards, the student approached Mrs Clinton and apologised, said the aide.
The former US president stole the diplomatic spotlight from his wife last week. On the day she set off on an 11-day trip to Africa, Mr Clinton was on a secret mission to North Korea to secure the release of two US journalists.
Mrs Clinton said afterwards she was relieved the mission had been successful but made clear the former president's Pyongyang mission was purely humanitarian and not linked to the work she is doing to revive stalled nuclear talks.
Reuters