Carina Perelli vowed on Tuesday to fight her dismissal as chief of the UN office helping to conduct free elections around the world, vehemently denying charges that she sexually harassed her staff and abused her authority.
She expressed hope that her firing would not have an impact on the critical Iraqi election on Dec. 15, the referendum in Congo on Dec. 18 and elections in the Palestinian territories on Jan. 25 and in Haiti early next year.
The 48-year-old Uruguayan has won wide praise for her work in helping organize elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and had been considered one of the young rising stars at the UN.
But in August, the UN formally accused her of harassing her staff after a four-month review by a Swiss consulting firm into the claims of an abusive and sexually offensive environment in the Electoral Assistance Division which she headed.
Perelli was handed a letter on Tuesday informing her that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had decided to summarily dismiss her "for serious misconduct" based on a subsequent UN investigation panel's report that found "you engaged in sexual and professional harassment of your staff and abused your authority as a manager."
The letter from Christopher Burnham, the UN Undersecretary-General, said Annan had concluded that Perelli's conduct was "inconsistent with the standards of conduct expected of international civil servants and that the patent nature and the gravity of this misconduct warrant immediate separation from service."
After meeting with Burnham and being informed of her rights, Perelli was escorted downstairs by a plainclothes UN security officer.
"I've been fired," she told several reporters.
She said she was going to fight the firing "because the charges are false, because there has been no due process."
Perelli said she would appeal her dismissal through the UN system and did not rule out taking further legal action afterward outside the UN.
Perelli said "there are a lot of inconsistencies and ironies in this case" that she hopes the UN appeals process will appreciate, including her nomination as a manager of the year this year -- a contest she did not win.
In a 19-page response last month to the accusations by the UN panel, Perelli questioned how her department could have performed so successfully "under almost impossible pressure" in elections around the world if staff were "cowed, afraid, demotivated and harassed."
Perelli accused the UN in the reply of violating her rights by overseeing a process "presuming me guilty and requiring me to prove my innocence."
She said she still did not know "any details about alleged incidents of abuse of authority and harassment," making it impossible to clear her name.
Perelli said her salary was terminated and she was losing her UN passport and health care for her family, including her husband, teenage daughter and disabled mother.
France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, said "we have a lot of esteem for her work."
"She wants to fight, so let's set the process going in the UN," he said. "Everyone has a right to defend themselves."
US Ambassador John Bolton criticized the firing just days before the Iraqi elections.
"One has to ask why after a year of inquiry a decision had to be made nine days before a critical election in Iraq that the office here at the UN is very much involved in," he said. "I think [this] is another example of why we need reform at the UN."
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