(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-07 23:07

LONDON -- An adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama apologized Friday for telling a Scottish newspaper that rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is "a monster".

Democratic presidential candidates Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) (L) makes a point as Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) looks to the moderator to respond during their last debate before the Ohio primary in Cleveland, Ohio, February 26, 2008. [Agencies]

Samantha Power, a foreign policy adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and Pulitzer Prize winner, was quoted in remarks she later attempted to retract as saying in The Scotsman newspaper that Clinton was stooping to low tactics to recover ground in the race to win the party's presidential nomination.

The Harvard professor is quoted as telling the newspaper Obama's team had been disappointed with Clinton's campaign win in Ohio on Tuesday.

"In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win," Power is quoted as saying. "She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything."

Power issued a statement Friday in which she acknowledged the comments but said she "deeply regretted them."

"It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms," she said in the statement. "I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics."

Obama's spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail: "Senator Obama decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign."

Though Power immediately attempted to withdraw the remark, the newspaper insisted she had agreed in advance that her interview -- part of a book tour -- would be conducted on the record.

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh'," Power is quoted as telling the newspaper. "But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

In a separate interview for Britain's left-leaning New Statesman magazine, published Thursday, Power warned Clinton's campaign against reveling in the trial of an Obama donor Antonin "Tony" Rezko on corruption charges.

"I don't think it's a good idea for the Clintons to get into a competition over who's got the most unsavory donations, you know what I mean?" Power was quoted as telling the magazine.