US: Beleaguered House of Representatives speaker Dennis Hastert has received strong support from top Republicans following his apology for his failure to stop former congressman Mark Foley from sending lewd e-mails to teenage congressional pages.
President George Bush called the speaker late on Thursday to express support and Senate majority leader Bill Frist issued a statement backing Mr Hastert's decision to remain in his post.
Mr Hastert has been under pressure to step down since Kirk Fordham, a former aide to Mr Foley, said this week that he warned the speaker's staff about the congressman's contacts with teenage pages three years ago.
The speaker, who is third in line to the president after vice-president Dick Cheney, insisted that he did nothing wrong and that his staff did not tell him about concerns over Mr Foley's behaviour.
"I'm deeply sorry this has happened and the bottom line is we're taking responsibility . . . I don't know who knew what when . . . If it's members of my staff that didn't do the job, we will act appropriately," he said.
The house ethics committee has approved almost 50 subpoenas for witnesses and documents relating to improper contacts between Mr Foley and current and former pages.
Republicans have admitted that they did not inform the only Democrat on the committee that administers the system of pages - teenagers who work as messengers in Congress - about Mr Foley's actions.
The FBI has contacted a former page from Louisiana who received intimate e-mails from Mr Foley and three more former pages have come forward to say they had sexual approaches from the former congressman. Mr Foley, who has entered a treatment centre for alcohol abuse, admits sending lewd messages to the teenage boys but claims that he never had sexual contact with any of them. Republicans fear that the scandal, which has dominated the news for the past week, could cost them their majority in the House or Senate in next month's mid-term elections. Most party strategists believe that Mr Foley's seat will be lost to the Democrats and that the scandal could persuade conservative Christians to stay at home.
