Is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice campaigning to be John McCain’s running mate? If so, McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said on Sunday that he had not noticed.

“I missed those signals,” McCain told reporters on his campaign plane en route to Kansas City.

Nonetheless, McCain took a few moments to compliment Rice. “I think she’s a great American, I think there’s very little that I can say that isn’t anything but the utmost praise for a great American citizen, who served as a role model to so many millions of people in this country and around the world,” McCain said, adding that “her overall record is very, very meritorious”.

McCain was responding to questions from reporters about comments made on the ABC programme “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” by Dan Senor, a former military spokesman for coalition forces in Baghdad. Senor said Rice spoke last week before an unusual forum for a secretary of state: a meeting of economic conservatives led by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this,” Senor said. Rice has said she was not interested in being vice president.