Clinton urges "vote of conscience"

alleging potential impeachable crimes by Clinton prompted the impending vote. Starr sent a letter to House judiciary leaders yesterday warning his probe was not completed and more evidence could be on the way.

The only remaining suspense over today’s vote was how many Democrats would abandon Clinton and join Republicans in authorising an open-ended, unrestricted investigation that could range far beyond the fall-out from his affair with former White Houseintern Monica Lewinsky.

A strong Democratic vote for a broad inquiry would undercut White House arguments that the Republicans were conducting a partisan exercise to bring down Clinton in the first presidential impeachment hearings since Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal in 1974.

“I think everyone should cast a vote on principle and conscience,” Clinton told reporters during a picture-taking session with visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

“It’s up to others to decide what happens to me, and ultimately it’s going to be up to the American people to make a clear statement there,” Clinton said.

A group of 40 freshman Democrats attended a White House meeting with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who urged them to vote based on “what they think is right”, spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

Representative Vic fazio of California, chairman of the Democratic caucus, also went to the White House to warn Clinton that some Democrats would be joining Republicans in voting to open aninquiry.

“But I think they do so with a great deal of scepticism on one hand, but at the same time a sense that in their case, either because of strong personal views or constituent pressures, that that’s the right thing to do,” Fazio told reporters.

Some Democrats estimated about 65 of the House’s 206 Democrats, nervous about how a vote against the inquiry would play at home before the November 3 elections, would support the Republican plan.

The freshman Democrats invited to the White House heard the first lady urge them to vote for a Democratic alternative that would limit the length and scope of the investigation.

She told them to base their vote on “what their conscience tells them to vote”, Lockhart said. If Democrats defect, they would be under no penalty at the White House, he added.

Panel says Democrats kept suspect funds

WASHINGTON, Oct 8: The head of the House of representatives panel probing President Bill Clinton’s campaign fund-raising has charged that Democrats had failedto return $ 1.8 million of illegal or suspect funds.House government reform chairman Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, also vowed to extend his fund-raising probe to “crack through the stone wall” of what he described as deceit and delay.

At a news conference yesterday before releasing an interim report on the funds investigation, Burton said the Democrats had failed to return more than $ 600,000 in “clearly illegal” contributions and an additional $ 1.1 million in suspect contributions.