While saying there was no violence involved in the May incident at a New York City hotel that led to his arrest on a sexual assault charge, former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has admitted making a “grave moral mistake” during what he says was a consensual encounter with a maid.

“I regret it infinitely,” he said.

As Eleanor Beardsley reported from Paris for the NPR Newscast and Morning Edition, in an interview on French TV, Strauss-Kahn also expressed “regret to his wife, his family and the French people. But, “he never apologized and he didn’t rule out a political plot to frame him.”

Before the incident, for which all charges have been dropped because of doubts about the accuser’s crediblity, Strauss-Kahn had been a possible presidential candidate in next year’s French elections. He resigned from the IMF following his arrest. He said in the interview that he wants to “take time to reflect” before deciding whether to make a return to politics.

The Guardian adds that “in his first public explanation of events leading up to his arrest in New York in May and imprisonment on charges — later dropped — of attacking the woman, Strauss-Kahn swung from punchy to contrite.”

Strauss-Kahn appeared on the French network TF1’s 20 Heures program Sunday evening. It has posted the video here.

The Associated Press says that “Strauss-Kahn also dismissed as ‘imaginary’ separate claims by a French writer that he tried to rape her during a 2003 interview, again insisting “no act of aggression, no violence” had taken place between the two.

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