President Clinton called on the world to fight against terrorism yesterday, but failed to dispel resentment over the US attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan and Washington's failure to pay its UN dues.
Sticking to his formal address to the UN General Assembly despite the overwhelming distraction of his videotaped testimony about the Monica Lewinsky affair on television, Mr Clinton stood gravely at the green marble podium and urged greater international co-operation to fight what he called "the world's problem".
Citing the bombing atrocities in Omagh, and against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as attacks in Tokyo, Argentina and the Middle East, the President said: "We know many people see us [the US] as a symbol of a system and values they reject, but we are no threat to any peaceful nations.
"It is a grave misconception to see terrorism as only an American problem. Terror is not a way to tomorrow, it is only a throwback to yesterday. The killing of innocents is not a social programme."
Mr Clinton said he wanted the US to make a special effort to reach out to the Muslim world, insisting there was no clash of civilisations but only a choice between good and evil.
"We have seen false prophets distort the words of their faith to justify cold-blooded murder," he said. "They cloak their attacks in the mantle of religion and would have the world believe that Almighty God himself, the merciful, grants a licence to kill. But they do not represent what we know Islam to be."
The President called for enhanced co-operation to fight the new technologies available to terrorists. But he said there must also be greater efforts to tackle "the sources of despair" before they turn into hatred.
With millions across the world glued to his taped grand jury testimony as he spoke to the UN, Mr Clinton made a clear but far from convincing attempt to dispel the mounting concern that the world's only superpower is dangerously distracted from its global responsibilities. He called for greater attention to the world economic crisis, to prevent a loss of confidence in free markets and democracy, and for a halt to the spread of weapons of mass destruction after this year's tit-for-tat nuclear tests by India and Pakistan.
But he conspicuously failed to mention the disastrous state of relations between the US and the UN, with the prospect that the US will lose its General Assembly vote by the end of the year because Congress is holding back payment of more than $1.5 billion - over half the organisation's annual operating budget.
Mr Clinton is seen as too weak or unwilling to battle a hostile Congress to preserve a strong US role. To avoid losing its General Assembly vote, the US will have to pay some $200 million by the end of the year, but congressional complications are expected to prevent this or link it to demands for further UN reform.
Beyond the UN, with economic crises in Asia and Russia, violence in Kosovo, impasse in the Middle East peace process and nuclear proliferation out of control in India and Pakistan, fears are growing that the administration is too preoccupied to focus on big global issues.
Senator Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said before Mr Clinton's address: "Foreign leaders who know about the President's difficulties, who know about the attitude and partisanship of Congress, are wondering whether this is a President who can deliver. I think, in a sense, foreign policy has been paralysed."
While Ms Madeleine Albright and Mr William Cohen, the Secretaries of State and Defence, insist that the President is fully engaged in dealing with policy, there are fears that any decisive action taken will be viewed in Washington and throughout the world through the prism of scandal.
British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, offered last night to host an international anti-terrorist summit in London this autumn. He called for a global crackdown on terrorism, warning in a speech to the UN General Assembly that the men of violence did not respect borders. The summit would look at how to stop the terrorists raising funds.
"The fight against terrorism has taken on a new urgency," he warned. "The past year's global roll call of terror includes Luxor, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Omagh and many others. Each one is a reminder that terrorism is a uniquely barbaric and cowardly crime. Each one is a reminder that terrorists are no respecters of borders."