On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called "Hats on for Bella" in Washington.

In her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has touted her experience in the Clinton White House as preparation to lead the nation in a time of crisis. "Ready on day one" has been her slogan.

But an initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedules from her days as first lady, released today by the National Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, shows that she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton's presidency.

Clinton, who was an accomplished attorney and first lady of Arkansas before moving to the White House, frequently claims more than 30 years experience in public life, contrasting herself with Barack Obama's slimmer resume - he served several years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the US Senate in 2004.

The Clinton campaign claimed on Wednesday that the release of the papers would show Clinton to have been an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of the US. But the documents from her office in the White House threaten to undermine her claim to have played a major role in Clinton's foreign policy decisions.

For instance, Clinton has said she helped negotiate the April 1998 Good Friday agreement between warring factions in Northern Ireland. But while Catholic and Protestant figures hashed out last-minute details of a power-sharing agreement in Belfast, Clinton was at the National Press Club in Washington at a party honouring Bella Abzug, a congresswoman from New York City who had died recently. While President Clinton phoned major participants in the peace talks, she met with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and joined a farewell party for Democratic operative Karen Finney. On the day the agreement was actually signed, she met with Philippine first lady Amelita Ramos.

When Nato launched air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, Clinton toured ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor, and stayed overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel there.

On August 20, 1998, Bill Clinton ordered US missile strikes on suspected terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan. The president and Hillary Clinton were on holiday on Martha's Vineyard, a posh island vacation spot off the coast of Massachusetts. After announcing the attack, Clinton cut short his break and returned to Washington to confer with his national security team; Hillary Clinton remained on the Vineyard until August 30, her records show.

There are other key foreign policy dates when the record is not so clear: on the day the presidents of three Balkan states signed a peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, ending years of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia, Clinton's file lists no public schedule for that day, but indicates she was in Washington.

The documents' release on Wednesday came in response to a conservative organisation's freedom of information request and subsequent lawsuit. The records include schedules from nearly 3,000 days Clinton was in the White House, and detail meetings, trips, speaking engagements and social activities.

Bruce Lindsey, a Little Rock attorney and long time Clinton confidant, vetted the pages prior their release. He and national archives staff checked the documents for information sensitive to national security and law enforcement matters.

Nearly a third of the pages have redactions, most of which the archives said were made to protect the privacy of Clinton's associates. The redacted material includes home addresses, telephone numbers and social security numbers, the archives said.

Christopher Farrell, director of investigations and research with Judicial Watch, the organisation behind the two-year-long legal effort to win the documents' release, said he doesn't anticipate finding any "smoking gun" within the reams of pages.

He said Lindsey "has enormous discretion" to redact information potentially damaging to Clinton's White House bid. "My expectations are quite low."

Hillary Clinton was present in the White House, however, for at least one significant event of the Clinton presidency. On November 15 1995, when President Clinton is said to have begun his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, she was in the White House, according to her schedule.

The release of Clinton's White House papers have made it possible to work out her whereabouts during the key moments in the Lewinsky scandal by comparing her schedule to the detailed account of Clinton's affair detailed in the Starr Report.

On at least one other occasion, the Clintons met on official White House duties shortly after Bill Clinton and Lewinsky had been engaged in sexual activity, the papers suggest.

The revelation does not undermine her claim to having had an important policy role in the Clinton White House, but could prove embarrassing to her presidential campaign as it highlights again one of the most damaging episodes of the Clinton years.