Clinton refuses to resign, vows to fight back

WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Agencies) Beleaguered US. President Bill Clinton today said he has no intention of resigning and vowed to fight back vigorously against the politically-damaging Starr report on his affair with Monica Lewinsky that outlines 11 impeachable counts.

Confessing he had ''sinned'' and wants to be ''forgiven by God and man'' at a prayer meeting, a weary but determined Clinton, whose days in office have been tainted by several sexual escapades, however, said he had no intention of resigning.

''I will instruct my lawyers to mount a vigorous defence, using all the available appropriate arguments,'' he said indicating he would fight back hard against starr's 445-page sexualy explicit report that charges him with abusing his office.

Meanwhile, attorneys for President Bill Clinton are preparing an extensive rebuttal-of the allegations presented by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who claims Clinton is guilty of 11 impeachable offences in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

Mr Starr’s explicit, often titillating 445-page report to the US Congress focuses on Mr Clinton’s sexual affair with Monica, who was a 21-year-old White House intern when the relationship began in 1995.

Mr Clinton’s lawyers counter that the report was designed to "embarrass" the President, and had nothing to do with issues such as the failed Whitewater land deal that Mr Starr began investigating in 1994.

Early today, the Clinton attorneys were working on a lengthy, meticulous rebuttal of each of the charges in the report, CNN reported.

The Clinton team "will accuse Starr of exaggerating and grossly distorting the evidence", CNN said.

The Starr report gives times, dates, and places of Mr Clinton’s sexual encounters with Monica, and is so explicit in detailing each sex act it often reads like an X-rated pulp novel.

Monica, now 25, testified that she performed oral sex on Mr Clinton nine times. Mr Clinton, however, never reciprocated nor had intercourse with her, the report said.

Monica also testified to genital-to-genital contact, described sex games with a cigar, and said Mr Clinton twice brought her to orgasm.

"I never expected to fall in love with the President. I was surprised that I did," she testified, saying that at times she believed he loved her too.

The details are needed, Mr Starr contends, to support charges that the President can be found guilty of perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and engaging "in a pattern of conduct that was inconsistent with his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws".

The presidential defence emerging seems to focus on the fact that, even if Mr Clinton did something wrong, it does not meet the standard set for impeachment.

"A relationship outside one’s marriage is wrong, and the President admits that," the White House stated in its rebuttal yesterday. "It is not a high crime or misdemeanour".

According to the US Constitution, a President can be ousted only upon "impeachment for, and conviction of, treason bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours".

Mr Clinton’s initial defence seems to be that while he may have been wrong and misleading, he did not commit any crime.

The White House’s 73-page response to Mr Starr’s report does not deny that Mr Clinton had a relationship outside of marriage, or that the President did not give full and complete answers to Paula Jones’ lawyers in the sexual harassment lawsuit against him.

Rather, the President’s lawyers argue that Mr Clinton’s actions do not meet the legal standards for perjury, or impeachment. It is a strategy designed to reduce the chance that the House will move to impeach the President.

"Impeachment is both a legal and a political proceeding," said former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee when it approved articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. "It really has to be built on public support."

The White House response, written by Mr Clinton’s private attorney, David Kendall, and presidential counsel Charles Ruff and their associates, does not deny that the President did not provide the full story of his relationship with Ms Monica Lewinsky to Ms Jones’ lawyers. Under the law, he does not have to, they argued.

"If answers are truthful or literally truthful but misleading, there is no perjury as a matter of law, no matter how misleading the testimony is or is intended to be," the lawyers wrote. "The law simply does not require the witness to aid his interrogator. The referral seeks to punish the President for being unhelpful to those trying to destroy him politically."

For a fascinated international community, the explicit sexual exploits of the world’s most powerful man were seen today as a bemusing and sordid twilight of an American century, said a report from London.

In France, where many politicians consider the phrase "sex scandal" a contradiction in terms, the media passed scathing judgment on the USA.

An air of incredulity, mixed with fascination for President Bill Clinton’s sexual past and political future, was reflected in front-page coverage of the report by Independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr laying out intimate details of the President’s trysts with Monica Lewinsky.

The report’s prompt publication on the Internet also provoked surprise in France, where politicians’ sex lives are private affairs and senior leaders have long enjoyed an informal immunity from the legal troubles Mr Clinton faces.

"Hell is American," the leading French daily Le Monde wrote today.

In an editorial ringing with stupefaction, Le Monde described Mr Starr’s report as a "Monster.. worthy of the reports of the inquisition.. where deviants and heretics were hunted down to the depths of their souls.

"By the magic of the Internet, the four corners of our universe were turned into a planetary audience and we all became peeping Toms by the choice of the American Congress," it said.

The Left-wing liberation wrote, "Monicagate is a surrealist vaudeville because it telescopes two previously separate universes of sexual intimacy and the constitutional orders — affairs of the flesh and of state wind up under the sheets."

The conservative Le Figaro ran a damning editorial, entitled "Gulliver trapped", in which it slammed Mr Clinton for the damage done to the world’s last superpower.

In Germany, too, where politicians’ indiscretions are often seen as irrelevant, there was a damning tone to commentaries.

"Mr Clinton is a President who has been caught with his trousers down," said the highbrow Frankfurter Allgemeine. "A skirt-chaser is not a good occupant for the White House."

Swiss newspapers were shocked that Mr Starr’s report should be disclosed on an Internet website.

Today’s Geneva daily Le Temps showed a cartoon of Mr Clinton sitting at his desk in the Oval office, with an arrow pointing to the President labelled, Internet-style, "click here to remove from office".

Betting in Britain on Clinton’s exit

LONDON, Sept 12 (AP) — A London bookmaker is taking wagers about how long President Bill Clinton can stay in office. Every customer putting money on Mr Clinton lately has bet he will be out within six months, according to the IG Index bookies.

The bookmaker hopes Mr Clinton, the fabled "comeback kid’’ of American politics, survives his sex-and-lies scandal, so that it can make maximum profits, spokesman Paul Austin said yesterday. "We want the President, from a purely selfish point of view, to go on for a higher number of months,’’ he said.

Other bookmakers are shying away from Mr Clinton’s dilemma, though the fate of embattled British politicians would be fair enough fodder for a bet.

"If this was Tony Blair, we would be putting up odds and changing them every five minutes,’’ said William Hill Betting Chain spokesman Graham Sharpe, referring to Britain’s Prime Minister.

"The problem we’ve got here is we’re not at the centre of action. There are lots of people better informed on this than us,’’ Mr Sharpe said.IG Index, which takes the Clinton bets, specialises in wagers on stock market indexes.

It is offering "spread betting’’ on the President’s staying in power.Mr Clinton is in the 20th month of a 48-month term, and gamblers have two options: they can bet that he hangs on less than 26 months or more than 30, with the payoffs or losses based on how long he stays

If he leaves this month, anybody who bets $ 10 that he will be gone soon will win $ 60, $10 for each month short of the spread.But if Mr Clinton serves all 48 months, the gambler would lose $ 180, $ 10 for each month over 30 that Mr Clinton stays.