President Bill Clinton was accused of raping a woman while he was a student at Oxford University during the 1960s, it was claimed today.

The accusation, posted on the Internet, alleges that Mr Clinton assaulted the 19-year-old woman after meeting her in a pub in Oxford in 1969.

At the time, the future US president was a 22-year-old Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and studied at University College. During his time in Oxford, Mr Clinton lived at 64 Leckford Road, which has now become a major tourist attraction.

Oxford University told the Oxford Mail today that there was no record of a formal complaint against Mr Clinton in the University or college records.

"We can find nothing to support these claims," she added.

The website, Capitol Hill Blue, which has Republican sympathies, claims the woman, now married and living in London, confirmed the incident when contacted by their reporters. She refused to go public with details of the alleged attack, however, and then changed her phone number and hired a barrister who warned reporters to leave her alone.

A retired State Department employee, quoted on the website, said he had spoken with the woman's family and filed a report . He said Clinton had admitted having sex with her but said she consented.

The employee is quoted as saying: "There was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional trauma."

But he added: "We were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes Scholar charged with rape.

"I filed a report with my superiors and that was the last I heard of it."

He added that Clinton's interests while at Oxford appeared to be drinking, drugs and sex rather than studies.

"I came away from the incident with the clear impression that this was a young man who was there to party, not study," he said.

In an informal chat with BBC reporter Gavin Esler, Clinton once joked: "If they ever find out what I got up to in Oxford then I'm in deep trouble."

The incident is one of several assaults alleged on the website against Mr Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Story date: Monday 01 March

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.