NEW YORK (AP) - Whitney Houston showed up four hours late for an interview, had trouble keeping her eyes open and said meeting a president was about the same as hanging out with a junkie, says Jane magazine.

[It was actually a photo shoot, not an interview. The interviewer was not at the photo shoot and is reporting hearsay.]

Houston, who bowed out of a scheduled performance on Sunday's Academy Awards show, explained to the magazine that she was late because she had to go to a dentist after cracking a tooth, the magazine says in a cover story in its May issue.

"When Whitney arrived, she was extremely unfocused, had trouble keeping her eyes open and kept singing and playing an imaginary piano on the table,'' wrote the interviewer, Tony Romando. "I guess laughing gas can do that to you.''

Asked if she'd ever met a president or hung out with a junkie, she said "sure'' and added that the experience was "just the same. The president gets off on the country. The junkie gets off on a couple of hits. They're the same, both cut from the same cloth, they're just men, you dig?''

She did not say which president she had met.

[Whitney has met both U.S. Presidents Bush and Clinton.]

Houston wore a gold and diamond bracelet during the interview. She told the magazine that after she signed her first contract with Arista records, "I asked this Jew guy on Diamond Row in New York'' to make it.

Houston spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer did not immediately return a call for comment today. She told the Daily News: "I've never heard Whitney use language like that. She doesn't think in terms of race or religion.''