WASHINGTON, Dec 27: US Senator Hillary Clinton has narrowly beaten global television celebrity Oprah Winfrey in an annual poll to choose the woman Americans admire most.

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed on Thursday, made it onto the list for the first time, chosen by two per cent of respondents as the woman they admire most.

Bhutto had returned to Pakistan in October after several years in exile to contest a parliamentary election scheduled for next month. Other women in the top 10 were US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (five per cent); actress Angelina Jolie and first lady Laura Bush, both with three percent; and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who had the same level of support as Bhutto.

US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, African-American author Maya Angelou and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II rounded off the list, all garnering one per cent of Americans’ votes.

Clinton, who is the front-runner in the Democratic party’s contest to choose a candidate to run for president in next November’s election, was chosen by 18 per cent of Americans in the survey conducted earlier this month by USA Today newspaper and the Gallup polling agency, as the woman they admired the most.

It was the sixth year in a row that Clinton topped the annually compiled list of most admired women.

Winfrey, who has been actively campaigning for Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, was just two percentage points behind the former first lady, with 16 per cent of the vote.—AFP