A key foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama has apologised, after branding his White House foe Hillary Clinton a "monster" who would stoop to anything to win the Democratic nomination.
Samantha Power made the explosive comments in an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, in the latest sign that Obama's once flawless campaign is feeling the heat from increased pressure from the Clinton camp.
"We f***d up in Ohio," Power told the Scottish daily, referring to the Illinois senator's loss to the former first lady in the midwestern state in Tuesday's primary.
"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 was quoted as saying.
"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power said.
"You just look at her and think 'Ergh.'"
The Obama campaign attempted to tamp down the controversy, putting out a statement by Power, and disavowing her remarks.
"These comments do not reflect my feelings about Senator Clinton, whose leadership and public service I have long admired," Power said in her statement
"I should not have made these comments and I deeply regret them. It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms.
"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 his boss "decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign."
The latest nasty twist to the campaign came a day after the New York senator's camp accused Obama's team of acting like Clinton nemesis, special prosecutor Ken Starr, in its attempts to force her to publish her tax returns.
Power's comments came as she was interviewed in London promoting her book on UN representive Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad in 2003.
Power is a professor of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Her previous book "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, won a Pulitzer Prize.
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