WASHINGTON: Bill Clinton has given his most candid account yet of his affair with Monica Lewinsky, saying he did it because he "could". He called the decision "a terrible moral error" but not a resigning issue.

In a US television interview to launch the promotional tour for his autobiography, My Life, Mr Clinton said family counselling had saved his marriage, eventually persuading Hillary not to walk out on him, even though she had put him "in the doghouse".

He said: "We did it together, we did it individually, we did family work." The former president never uttered Lewinsky's name in the interview. But he told the veteran CBS news anchor Dan Rather that he had committed adultery "for the worst possible reason - just because I could. I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything".

But in a carefully controlled display of contrition, to be broadcast on Sunday on 60 Minutes, the most-watched current affairs programme in the US, Mr Clinton emphatically stopped short of giving any ground to those who had called for him to stand down.

He said fighting impeachment had been "a badge of honour". He added: "I didn't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate." Asked if he had ever thought of abandoning the White House, he said: "I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back."

Mr Rather, who was himself interviewed by USA Today, said Mr Clinton proved he had written the 975-page book himself, in long- hand, by showing a stack of notebooks more than 1.8 metres (6ft) high.

Despite the scandal that dominated much of his time in office, Mr Clinton maintained that he had "had a lot of great days during his presidency". He said: "The day that the Kosovo war ended, and I knew Milosevic's days were numbered, was a great day."

But he believed his greatest achievements had been economic. "I kept score, how many people's lives were better off ... I think the fact that we were able to have 22 million jobs and record home ownership and lower interest rates ... people actually had the ability to do more things than ever before." He wished, he added, that he had been able to solve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

Mr Clinton underscored his conviction that he was the victim of a plot to unseat him when he spoke at the New York premiere of a new documentary, The Hunting of the President, based on a book that meticulously unpicked the alliance of rightwing journalists, political activists and Republican hangers-on who wanted him out of the White House. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.