President Bill Clinton has made a dramatic plea for forgiveness to the American people and to Congress which has now gone ahead with the first steps towards his possible impeachment.
Minutes after Mr Clinton's televised appeal from the Rose Garden of the White House, the Judiciary Committee voted to have him face perjury charges in the full House of Representatives next week. It is the third time in US history that impeachment articles against a president have been sent to the House.
Speaking hours before his departure for the Middle East, the President declared himself ready to accept "rebuke and censure" from Congress but did not mention the word "impeachment". His hope clearly is that this self-humiliation will sway enough moderate Republicans in the 435-member House to ensure the impeachment articles will not be passed and they will be satisfied with a harsh censure instead.
Just four weeks ago, the President's fortunes seemed to be riding high after the unexpected Democratic gains in the mid-term elections and the sudden resignation of Speaker Newt Gingrich. Impeachment was being dismissed as virtually impossible but to the dismay of the White House, opinion among the majority Republicans has hardened against the President because he has refused to admit to lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky when he testified to the grand jury last August.
The stakes are now extremely high as a handful of Republican votes could decide whether the House votes for impeachment and sends the President for an ignominious trial in the Senate. The Republicans have a 22-vote majority in the House but four of them have already announced that they will vote against impeachment. However, three Democrats have said that they will vote to impeach the President. The majority of Republicans have still to declare their intentions in the vote expected next Thursday.
It is by no means clear that the President's appeal will have the desired effect of swaying undecided Republicans as he refused to admit in his four-minute statement that he had lied under oath.
The Republican chief whip in the House, Mr Tom Delay, immediately dismissed the President's appeal as "an insult to the intelligence" of the members of Congress and of the American people. Saying that the President "refuses to acknowledge that he broke the law," Mr Delay said that he "should end this process by resigning his office for the good of the nation."
In his statement, President Clinton said: "What I want the American people to know, what I want the Congress to know is that I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.
I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends or my family. Quite simply I gave into my shame."
Mr Clinton, looking pale but composed under a wintry sun, said that "mere words cannot fully express the profound remorse I feel for what our country is going through and for what members in both parties of Congress are now forced to deal with."
Referring to the "agony " he is experiencing for the pain he has caused his family, Mr Clinton said "I would give anything to go back and undo what I did."
This dramatic development came after Democratic and Republican members in the Judiciary Committee wrangled for hours over the first article of impeachment charging him with "perjurious, false and misleading testimony" under four headings to a grand jury on August 17th.
Democrats argued the charges were not specific enough and should be spelled out in detail. This led to exchanges about the sexual encounters between the President and Monica Lewinsky.
She has sworn that they had oral sex on about 10 occasions and that he touched her in ways that amounted to sexual relations according to the definition under which the President testified.
Democrats have poured scorn on the idea that arguments about "what he - Mr Clinton - touched and when" could be part of an impeachment process.