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The United Nations refugee chief Ruud Lubbers resigned Sunday due to dissatisfaction with the way the UN is dealing with allegations against him of sexual harassment.
Lubbers sent a letter of resignation as UN High Commissioner for Refugees to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a spokesman of the refugee agency UNHCR confirmed in a telephone interview with Xinhua.
The refugee chief handed in the letter two days after meeting Annan in New York on Friday to discuss the allegations which had been troubling him since last summer.
As for the allegations that Lubbers made sexual harassment to a female employee, Annan had said the allegations were "unsustainable on a legal basis."
But after the British newspaper, The Independent, published details of a secret UN investigation report on the affair, Annan consulted lawyers on Friday.
As to the change of Annan's attitude, Lubbers said in his letter that "To be frank, and despite all my loyalty, insult has been added to injury and therefore I resign as High Commissioner." "For more than four years I gave all my energy to UNHCR. Now in the middle of a series of problems and with ongoing media pressure you apparently view this differently," he wrote. He also criticized UN investigators of compiling a biased report. "The complaint of sexual harassment could not be substantiated," he wrote.
Lubbers, 65, who was Dutch prime minister from 1982 to 1994,took office as chief of the refugee agency on Jan. 1, 2001.
(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2005)
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