NEW YORK (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has scheduled trips to Iowa and New Hampshire next month, fueling talk that the former chairman of the Republican National Committee may be eyeing a bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 2012.

But Barbour dismissed such speculation Friday, saying any Republican who was looking past races this year and 2010 ‘‘doesn’t have their eye on the ball.’’

‘‘I don’t know if I’ll even be alive in 2012,’’ Barbour said in an interview with The Associated Press. ‘‘Besides, I’ve told everyone I know that every Republican ought to be focused on governors’ races in 2009 and the 2010 elections, where 36 governors and the entire House will be on the line.’’

Barbour will travel to a fundraising event for the New Hampshire GOP on June 24, before heading to Iowa for the same purpose the next day. Barbour, who will take over as chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2010, said he was focusing his political travel on states with important governors’ races that year.

He’ll also be campaigning that week for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who is running to recapture the governorship there this year after eight years of Democratic control. After a spate of searing losses in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, Republicans believe they have good chance of winning the Virginia governorship, where Democrat Tim Kaine is stepping down, and defeating Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine this fall.

Barbour, one of his party’s most astute political strategists and a nationally known figure on the political stage, is well aware of the optics of his decision to visit Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with early presidential voting contests.

But, Barbour said, his stated lack of national ambition is precisely why he’d been invited to New Hampshire.

‘‘Former Gov. (John) Sununu, the new state party chair, called and said he said he wanted someone not running for president to come and speak, so I agreed,’’ Barbour said.