"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said during an afternoon news conference at the University of Pittsburgh's Greensburg campus. ". . . We don't have a choice when it comes to our relatives; we have a choice when it comes to our pastors."

Clinton was elaborating on her response earlier in the day to a question at a meeting with editors and reporters at the Tribune-Review in Greensburg. She was interviewing for the paper's endorsement in Pennsylvania's April 22 Democratic primary.

"I was speaking for myself, just answering a question that was posed to me," Clinton said when reporters asked during the news conference whether she considered Obama's handling of the matter inadequate. "It's a very personal matter."

Obama condemned Wright's remarks but embraced the pastor last week when the senator made a major speech on race relations that asked black and white Americans to understand each other's frustrations.

The Obama camp yesterday said in a statement: "After initially refusing to play politics with this issue, it's disappointing to see Hillary Clinton's campaign sink to this low."

The Tribune-Review is owned by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a financier of conservative causes, including, at one point, research into Bill Clinton's alleged sexual affairs when he was governor of Arkansas. He was a prominent part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton blamed for the couple's political woes in a 1998 TV interview shortly after the Monica Lewinsky affair came to light.

She said yesterday her encounter with Scaife "was actually very pleasant."

"There was a lot of discussion of foreign and domestic issues," Clinton said. "I said at the beginning that . . . it was somewhat counterintuitive for me to be there."

Clinton also faced continued questions about her description of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire on a trip as first lady, a version contradicted by others on the trip and by videotape of an airport greeting ceremony.

"So I made a mistake, that happens," Clinton said, smiling. "I'm human, though I realize that comes as a revelation to some people."

When another reporter questioned her statement on a radio show that it was her first misstatement in 12 years, Clinton said: "I was joking! Lighten up, guys."

She said she has a lot of room for error, speaking "millions of words" a week as a presidential candidate.

Earlier, Clinton conducted a town-hall meeting on economic issues before a warmly receptive crowd of about 1,500 at the campus gymnasium. She talked about her proposal for a government-sponsored 401(k) program for people who cannot get the accounts through their workplaces, or who are full-time parents.

"My plan will help tens of millions of middle-class families to move from just getting by to getting ahead," Clinton said.

She drew her loudest cheers when she pledged never to "privatize" Social Security.

"Social Security privatization is an idea whose time has come and gone," Clinton said.