US: Four days before the California recall election, and only when it threatened his prospects of victory, has Arnold Schwarzenegger expressed regret for his widely rumoured humiliation and abusing of women during his career as a body-builder and film star.
He admitted he had "behaved badly" after the Los Angeles Times carried graphic accounts of harassment from several women interviewed by reporters.
Mr Schwarzenegger appeared to be about to deny the accusations outright when he faced a large crowd in San Diego at the start of a four-day campaign bus tour across California.
"Trash politics," he declared to loud cheers. "Everything you see is not true." But the hall quietened when he went on: "I have to say where there is smoke there is fire. I have to say that, yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful, but now I recognise that I offended people."
The earliest incident recorded by the paper happened in 1975 at a gymnasium when Mr Schwarz-enegger walked up behind the wife of a fellow-body builder, reached under her T-shirt and touched her left breast.
A former pro beach volleyball player said that in 1980 Mr Schwarzenegger grabbed and squeezed her left breast in the street after she had declined an invitation to his apartment.
"If I was a man," she said she told him, "I would bust your jaw."
The British television host Anna Richardson accused Mr Schwarzenegger of pulling her on to his knee and touching her breast during an interview in December 2000. A Hollywood publicist at the interview accused Ms Richardson of making the story up.
A movie studio secretary said Mr Schwarzenegger grabbed her buttocks in the late 1980s in an office on the Columbia Pictures lot. In front of her boss, Mr Schwarz-enegger slipped his left hand under her skirt and grabbed her right buttock, she said. He held on and said, "I'd love to work you out."
In 1990 when shooting Terminator 2: Judgment Day the actor allegedly pinned a female crew member in the lift and tried to pull down the straps of her bathing suit, she said. Another woman on the set said Mr Schwarzenegger called out, "Come here, you sexy devil", pulled her down and asked her if she had a particular sex act performed on her. Ms Nancy Tafoya, also on the same movie set, said she was talking with a group of people when Mr Schwarzenegger came up behind her and pulled her hair, snapping her head back painfully. Another woman said Mr Schwarzenegger was "a gentleman" whenever Maria Shriver, his wife since 1986, was present.
Mr Schwarzenegger's admission yesterday was an embarrassment for his spokesman, Mr Sean Walsh, who had denied the women's allegations, saying the actor had not engaged in improper conduct toward women.
Mr Schwarzenneger called the article "trash politics", but a spokesman for the California Governor, Mr Gray Davis, said he was not involved in publicising any of the accusations. Observers said the claims raised questions as to whether the movie star was the right person to lead California but might not stop the Mr Schwarzenegger juggernaut.
Allegations of improper sexual behaviour have already been aired in the media, including a 1977 interview in Oui magazine in which Schwarzenegger talked about engaging in group sex.
On Tuesday a Los Angeles Times poll showed the Republican favourite with 40 per cent support over his nearest rival, Mr Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, with 32 per cent.