UN refugee agency chief Ruud Lubbers, who resigned on Sunday amid sex harassment allegations, slammed an internal United Nations report into the accusations as flawed and unfair. In a confidential document, obtained by Reuters, the former Dutch premier said the report gave no evidence to back up the charges and that remarks in it by UN investigators suggested ?vindictiveness? or a ?determination to suggest guilt.?

Lubbers, who a 51-year-old American says groped her as she was leaving his office in Geneva in late in 2003, announced his resignation in a bitterly worded letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In it he said that Annan, who last year decided against taking action on the report, had apparently caved in to pressure from a host of other problems facing the UN and the media.

Following a meeting between the two men in New York on Friday and on the same day that Britain?s The Independent newspaper carried fresh details from the probe, the UN let it be known that the case was not over and that Lubbers? future as High Commissioner for Refugees was in doubt. ?Now, in the middle of a series of problems and with ongoing media pressure, you apparently view this differently,? Lubbers, who has always insisted on his innocence, told Annan in his resignation letter.

The United Nations is already under fire for the scandal-tainted oil-for-food programme and sexual abuse by peacekeepers in the Congo. In the document, dated June 21, 2004, and laying out his response to the report?s conclusions, Lubbers said that the ?exaggerated and emotional language? ... ?does not suggest an investigation built on a scrupulous attention to fairness.?

He said there were two other people present in his office at the time when the incident was alleged to have taken place and that neither of them saw any impropriety in his actions. ?There is no evidence from those present of any sexual element,? he wrote.

Richard Waddington