Obama aide quits over Clinton 'monster' comment

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama resigned on Friday after calling campaign rival Hillary Clinton a "monster" during an interview with a British newspaper.

Samantha Power, a foreign policy aide on the Illinois senator's White House campaign, said the comments were inexcusable. They were published on Friday by The Scotsman newspaper.

"With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser to the Obama campaign effective today," Power said in a statement.

"Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign."

The comment threatened to be an embarrassment for Obama, who has criticized Clinton for what he called her negative campaign tactics and has stressed his commitment to rising above political bickering.

Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, are locked in a drawn-out battle for the Democratic nomination to face Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.

Power's comments were made on Monday before Clinton revived her presidential bid with wins in the big states of Ohio and Texas.

"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power was quoted by the newspaper as saying of Clinton.

"We f***** up in Ohio," she said. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win."

Before the news that she was quitting, Power issued an apology and Obama condemned the comment through his campaign.

"Senator Obama decries such characterizations, which have no place in this campaign," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.

Power, a former aide in Obama's U.S. Senate office, is the founding executive director of the Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide."

(Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by David Alexander and Bill Trott)

(For more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)