Anti-US feeling hits Chelsea's Oxford studies

Chelsea: In New York when planes struck

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former US president, says her studies at Oxford University have been overshadowed by anti-American sentiment in the wake of the 11 September attacks.

Ms Clinton, who was in New York when the hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center, said those events had forever changed her life.

She said that over the summer she had intended to seek out non-Americans as friends when she got to Oxford in October to begin her master's degree in international relations at University College.

But this had changed.

"It's hard to be abroad right now," she wrote in an article for the next issue of New York-based Talk magazine.

Anger

"Every day I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling.

"Sometimes it's from other students, sometimes it's from a newspaper columnist, sometimes it's from 'peace' demonstrators.

"Now I find that I want to be around Americans - people who I know are thinking about our country as much as I am."

She said she was angry at people who questioned America's actions in Afghanistan, but was grateful for all the British support she had received.

In Oxford, other students told BBC News they were surprised by the comments, because they had not detected any particular anti-Americanism.

Welfare concerns

But the university said it understood the difficulties some foreign students were experiencing since 11 September and was trying to help them.

"For young people leaving home, particularly such a country like the States that's not had such a terrible event happen before, inevitably this is going to make separation from friends and family harder," said Dame Fiona Caldicott from the student health and welfare committee.

"But I believe that the systems we have in the colleges are working," she said.

Ms Clinton wrote in her Talk article that she had been with friends in Manhattan when the attacks happened.

She watched on TV as the second plane hit. She tried to phone her mother - New York senator Hillary Clinton - but the line went dead.

'Deafening rumble'

She went outside and walked towards the twin towers in search of a public telephone.

"I remember very little about how I got so far downtown.

"I do remember standing in line at a phone somewhere and hearing a deafening rumble."

The noise was the second tower collapsing.

"We were all crying. We all thought we were literally going to have fire rain down on us - that we were the next target.

"For a brief moment I truly thought I was going to die."

The day's events had changed everything for her.

"I wouldn't have believed I had many innocences left," she wrote.

"I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters."