NEW YORK (AP) – Is U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel at it again?

The lawmaker who urged Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for Senate in 2000 suggested on Sunday that the former first lady might want to return to the White House. “You may remember that I encouraged you to seek elective office,” Rangel told Clinton during an awards ceremony in Harlem. “And I guess it’s too early to say it, but it ain’t over yet.”

Rangel spoke at Clinton’s fifth annual African American Heritage Celebration, at which she presented awards to civic leaders including Paul T. Williams Jr., president of 100 Black Men of America Inc., and Robert Carmona, president of STRIVE National, a job readiness program.

The event in the basement gym of the new Harlem Children’s Zone headquarters also included the presentation of $25,000 checks to four organizations that are working to fight AIDS in the black community by John Dempsey, the president of MAC Cosmetics. Monday is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Clinton said some HIV/AIDS groups are growing in the United States, particularly black women.

“African-American women are very hard hit by HIV-AIDS,” she said. “From the year 2000 until 2003, the rate of infections among African-American females was 19 times the rate of white females.”

Clinton added, “Part of this is still, let’s be honest, a veil of secrecy, a failure to let people know that you’re a carrier of this disease, and many women unfortunately are infected by the men in their lives. And so we have to change attitudes as well as provide treatment and education.”

Clinton, who faces a re-election campaign for Senate in 2006, is on many short lists of Democrats who could head the party’s presidential ticket in 2008.