Democratic presidential forerunner Barack Obama dismissed the speculation that he could run as the vice presidential candidate for his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a TV report released on Saturday.

"You won't see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I'm running for president," the Illinois Senator said in an interview with CBS. "We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count."

After winning three primaries on March 4 and regaining her momentum, the New York Senator and former First Lady suggested that she was open to the idea of sharing the ticket with Obama, meaning accepting Obama as her vice presidential candidate.

Former President Bill Clinton echoed his wife on Saturday in a campaign rally in Mississippi whose primary is set on Tuesday, saying a joint ticket pairing the two would be "almost unstoppable."

"I know that she has always been open to it, because she believes that if you can unite the energy and the new people that he's brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she's carried overwhelmingly, if had those two things together she thinks it'd be hard to beat," he said.

So far, Obama has won 28 Democratic primaries and caucuses while Clinton won 17, including Florida and Michigan primaries that have been stripped all delegates who would vote at the nomination convention for violating the party's rule.

However, neither Obama, with 1,527 delegates, nor Clinton, with 1,428, is likely to win 2,025 delegates in the primaries and caucuses needed to secure the presidential candidacy.

Super delegates who are granted to the party's senior officials and members are expected to play a decisive role in electing the Democratic presidential nominee.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2008)