MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cristina Fernandez Argentine president-elect thanks husband

President? “I'm still not used to that yet.” replied CK

First lady Cristina Fernandez, in her first televised interview since winning Argentina's presidency, thanked her husband for his role in her triumph and wished Hillary Rodham Clinton well in her U.S. election bid.

Speaking on Argentina's Todo Noticias network Monday, Fernandez defended President Nestor Kirchner's controversial handling of inflation and the nation's consumer price index and promised to put a priority on creating jobs, boosting exports and bettering health care and education. Fernandez, a 54-year-old three-term senator, captured 45 percent of the vote Sunday ? outpacing another female runner-up, independent Elisa Carrio, by more than 22 percentage points. A dozen other candidates trailed even further back in an unprecedented race where women took the top two spots. Fernandez acknowledged in the 40-minute interview that she admired Clinton and noted frequent comparisons made between the two. Both women are senators and lawyers who accompanied husbands from obscure state governorships as they rose to the presidency. "I've been with her," Fernandez said, referring to a 2004 meeting with Clinton in Boston that produced a photo of the two locked in big smiles as they met ? a staple of her campaign video and Web site. Another photo there showed her and Kirchner with former President Clinton last September in New York. "Everything seems to indicate that she is the favorite of the Americans" in the Democratic primary fight, Fernandez said of Hillary Rodham Clinton. "And why not? Another woman wouldn't be bad." At one point, Fernandez laughed when the interviewer, Argentine political journalist Joaquin Morales Sola, addressed her as the future "president," and she replied: "I'm still not used to that yet." Much of her success was due to the accomplishments of Kirchner, who oversaw a recovery from deep financial crisis, reaching growth rates of more than 8 percent a year ? help she acknowledged in a television interview late Monday. "Kirchner has been the flagship of this project as the president of all Argentines," she said. "It's very important what President Kirchner has achieved in four-and-a-half years in office and this triumph is part of that." As his close adviser, she said she was proud to help him as he turned the economy around, and she promised to continue his plans ? repeating a central campaign theme. Fernandez also defended her husband against a firestorm of criticism over his government's handling of the nation's consumer price index. Annual inflation was officially reported at 8.6 percent in September, and she dismissed independent forecasts that prices are in fact rising at more than double that rate. She promised unspecified measures to continue reducing the poverty that now afflicts a quarter of Argentina's 37 million people, down from more than 50 percent at the height of the 2002 crisis. She also vowed to make Argentine exports more competitive and promised to push Argentina, the second-largest South American economy, to strengthen the region's oft-troubled trade bloc, Mercosur. Mercosur, which includes the continent's largest economy, Brazil, and has invited Venezuela to join its traditional members, has been mired in frequent trade spats that have at times turned severe. "We have to deepen our place in Latin America and amplify Mercosur," she said, calling for the region's economies to integrate. Asked what her husband will do once he has left office ? a question that is raising widespread speculation in Argentina ? she laughed and said "chief of protocol" had been ruled out. "He's going to do what he has always done. He's a political animal. He's a man who deeply loves politics and really loves his country and has a great commitment to Argentina," she said. Aides have said any joint government with his wife has been ruled out.