Mosley will face a vote of confidence at an extraordinary meeting of the FIA general assembly on June 3, and several of the automobile clubs that make up the body have already publicly called on him to step down.
But in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Mosley said he had resisted those demands because he retained majority support within the organisation.
"The fundamental reason is that the people who elected me, the presidents of all these clubs worldwide, a number of them have written, and for every letter I've had from a club president saying 'I think you should step down' or 'I think you should consider your position', I've had seven, slightly more than seven, who said 'you've absolutely got to stay, don't give an inch', and 'this is the most outrageous invasion', and suggesting that there's more to this than meets the eye, which of course there may be," he told the newspaper.
"It would then be impossible to turn around to all these people, the great majority, and say, 'no I'm going to walk away', even if I'm inclined to.
"But my inclination is to stay and fight."
He said he was now content to leave his fate in the hands of the general assembly, but added that he had always intended to leave office at the end of his current term in any case.
"If they wish me to continue, I will continue, if they don't, I'll stop," Mosley said.
"But I will also say to them that it was always my intention, because it is, that I was never going to go beyond 2009.
"I kept quiet about that because the lesson with Tony Blair is, the day you say you're going to stop, you lose your influence.
"And I would normally have announced that in about a year's time.
"But I will tell them anyway that would be my intention.
"The reason's very simple.
"If you stop in 2009 aged 69, you can maybe still do something else useful.
"Were I to stay on till I was 73, I'd be getting very marginal."
Honda, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota and several former world champion drivers have questioned whether Mosley can stay on as FIA president, but he played down the significance of this criticism.
"As far as the people in the sport are concerned, it's interesting that none of the heavyweights have said anything, the people who really are the opinion formers in Formula 1," Mosley said.
The FIA president is taking legal action against the News of the World on privacy grounds, and he vigorously disputes the paper's allegations that the sexual role-playing he was involved in had a Nazi connotation.
"I think what happens is they think 'what can we get at him, ah yes, we can say he's this Nazi," Mosley said.
"Is there any basis for Nazism?
"Not really, but we can kind of invent something and then focus on the family name.
"The whole thing was quite deliberate from that point of view because it adds to the story.
"And of course these people, they don't care what damage they do, they don't care whether they tell the truth or a lie, they are prepared to do anything or say anything to sell a few of their papers and that's what it was.
"I don't think they're entitled to do this [allegedly invade his privacy], I don't think they should be entitled to do this, and I intend to do what I can to stop them.
"Now in addition to that, proceedings are being brought in other jurisdictions because they have put this out as said all over the world. There are some countries where their actions are illegal, illegal in the criminal sense in that they can be prosecuted. This is now under way."
Although Mosley has previously made his position clear in letters to the FIA member clubs, the Sunday Telegraph interview is his first public comment on the scandal.
He said the News of the World's actions had forced him into a response.
"These matters are intensely private and obviously I would prefer not to have to speak about them in public but I feel I have been left with no choice because of the enormous publicity which has been generated by the News of the World and their persistence in suggesting that I am not telling the truth," Mosley said.
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