Kuwait City: Former US president Bill Clinton said that his wife Hillary will be a "great secretary of state" if president-elect Barack Obama named her to the post.

"If he (Obama) decided to ask her and they did it together, I think she'll be really great as a secretary of state," Clinton told an economic conference in Kuwait hosted by the National Bank of Kuwait.

"She worked very hard for his election after the primary fight with him, and so did I, and we were very glad that he won and we have a lot of confidence that he can do a good job.

"But she didn't do what she did with the hope or expectation of getting any kind of job offer, much less having this discussed," Clinton said yesterday.

US media reported on Friday that Obama was considering naming former first lady Hillary Clinton, his onetime rival for the White House, as his secretary of state.

Hillary Clinton, 61, has extensive foreign policy experience from her time in the senate, where she serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and indirectly when her husband was president from 1993 to 2001.

The former president said that he had a couple of phone conversations with his wife in the past two days but that he was unaware if the issue of her appointment was discussed between the Obama camp and Hillary.

"The truth is I don't know," he said.

Source : PTI