The respected English Catholic weekly, The Tablet, has said that President Clinton has been "crippled" and dragged so low by the Starr report that it will be very hard for him to recover. However, in a strongly-worded editorial, it says the report presents no obvious grounds for the impeachment of the President.

"What Starr has done is to drag Clinton so low that it will be very hard for him to recover," it says. He had put President Clinton "through an inhuman ordeal, with details of his sexual behaviour published like pornography on the Internet for the whole world to read - details provided by the woman who said she loved him".

As a result, Mr Clinton had been "crippled more successfully than Saddam Hussein would ever have been able to. Starr accuses the president of abusing the power of his office; but what about his own powers as special prosecutor? What possible justification can there be for some of the material he has seen fit to include in his report? It is as though the American virtues of openness and accountability have run riot, enclosing all the agents concerned in this affair within a scheme of things which has lost touch with reality".

The journal says that "Starr's belief is that the irresponsible and wrong sexual behaviour that Clinton indulged in reveals a pattern of mendacity that illuminates the whole of this president's life. It was on that argument that he obtained permission to investigate the Lewinsky case. Yet the evidence he has so far produced in support of his thesis is at best inconclusive and ambiguous, even before it is exposed to rigorous cross-examination".

The editorial looks at the intentions of the fathers of the American constitution when they framed the laws on the impeachment of a president. "Their action was aimed against anyone who might seek to subvert the highest office of the state and put the constitution in danger, thus undermining the basis of the system. That, on the facts so far produced, Clinton has not done," it says.

"Let Congress beware, therefore, how they handle this. It is they who are the ultimate guardians of the constitution, not the media - and not the Internet," it concludes.