Clinton accuser plugs 'charity'

NEW YORK - Most things in Manhattan look rosier from the 64th floor - except poor Paula Jones. Yesterday, she took time off from suing President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment to accept a dollars 50,000 ( pounds 33,000) award from a jeans manufacturer for being 'in the forefront of an issue increasingly faced by American women', writes Peter Pringle.

She had to agree to give dollars 25,000 to a charity named by the jeans people - a Virginia home for battered women - and give the other dollars 25,000 to a charity of her choice: her legal defence fund for the suit against the President.

So, first of all, she didn't look exactly charitable. And second, it being 88 degrees outside, she appeared like every other New Yorker in high summer, hot and bothered and, well, washed up.

The aim of the award, hardly charitable, is to promote jeans under the company's name, No Excuses. It are the same firm that used other women involved in sex scandals: Donna Rice, caught in controversy with Senator Gary Hart in 1998; and Marla Maples of Donald Trump fame.

Part of Ms Jones's problem was that the jeans were not on show because she was standing behind a lectern. Inevitably, she was asked for the umpteenth time about her claim that she had been present in an Arkansas hotel room when the President was ' 'sposing himself'.

Ms Jones said she did not follow the case on television and had never thought of writing a book. 'What is there to sell?' she asked.