IF HILLARY CLINTON is named US secretary of state, she and her husband could be positioned to lead a public-private partnership on the global stage unlike any before it, one that experts say could bring with it a host of benefits and pitfalls for the new president.

Since leaving the White House, Bill Clinton has used his connections with world leaders to position himself as something akin to the world's philanthropist in chief - and become rich in the process by collecting huge sums from foreign companies eager to hear him speak.

For the past four years, he has convened the annual Clinton Global Initiative, a glamorous philanthropic conference that brings together hundreds of corporate chiefs, heads of state, humanitarians and celebrities.

The William J. Clinton Foundation has ballooned into a global non-governmental organisation with a staff of more than 800, addressing chronic problems such as climate change, hunger, AIDS and malaria.

If the president-elect, Barack Obama, selects Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, she will oversee many of the US government's foreign aid programs, potentially turning the couple into an overwhelming force in global aid, say some leaders in the philanthropic community. "It boosts her stature, it boosts the work of the Clinton Global Initiative, it boosts the whole concept of American partnerships making a real difference on the global level," said Steve Gunderson, president of the Council on Foundations and a former Republican congressman.

"She will be able to say in many of her meetings, 'We're in a situation where I can't commit congressional foreign assistance, but let me work with the philanthropic community back in the United States to see if there are ways that they can be helpful,' " Gunderson said.

But the choice of Clinton could present other problems for Obama. He would be investing his fortunes not only with his former rival for the presidency but also in an outsized figure on the global scene who has been conducting a kind of privately financed foreign policy all his own since leaving office. Mr Obama and the former president have also continued to share a somewhat strained relationship since the end of the Democratic nominating contest.