Hillary, in Africa, snaps over question about Bill

KINSHASA, Congo - Hillary Clinton has a message for the world: It's not all about Bill.

The secretary of state bristled yesterday when - as she heard it - a Congolese university student asked what her husband thought about a financial matter.

She hadn't traveled to Africa to talk about her husband the ex-president. But even there, she couldn't escape his outsized shadow.

She abruptly reclaimed the stage for herself.

"My husband is not secretary of state - I am!" she snapped. "I am not going to be channeling my husband!"

Clinton's presence, so bold in her historic presidential candidacy against Barack Obama, has sometimes been hard to see in the months she has served as the supposed face and voice of U.S. foreign policy.

Last week, her husband succeeded in a North Korean mission to free two journalists even as she landed in Africa on a seven-nation trip.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she asked incredulously when the student raised a question about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to Congo.

"If you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion," she said. "I am not going to be channeling my husband."

State Department officials said the student approached Clinton afterward and told her he had meant to ask what Obama, not Bill Clinton, thought about the Chinese loan. Clinton assured the student not to worry about it, one of her senior aides said.