Hillary Clinton snaps at Congolese student

The secretary of state bristled Monday when — as she heard it — a Congolese university student asked what her husband thought about an international financial matter, AP reported.

She hadn't traveled to Africa to talk about her husband the ex-president. But even there, she couldn't escape his outsized shadow.

She abruptly reclaimed the stage for herself.

"My husband is not secretary of state, I am," she snapped. "I am not going to be channeling my husband."

Clinton's presence, so bold in her historic presidential candidacy against Barack Obama, has sometimes been hard to see in the months she's served as the supposed face and voice of U.S. foreign policy.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she asked incredulously when the student raised a question about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to Congo.

"If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion," she said. "I am not going to be channeling my husband."

The moderator quickly moved on.

Clinton quickly recovered her cool Monday and moved on to other subjects. Just before the question that set off her anger, another student had asked if the U.S. and the West felt a need to apologize to the people of Congo for colonialism and postcolonial interference.

That brought a pointed rebuttal as well.

"I cannot excuse the past and I will not try," she said. "We can either think about the past and be imprisoned by it or we can decide we're going to have a better future and work to make it."