United Nations – Rejecting "implicit suggestions of racism," the United Nations on Friday denied an accusation made by one of its officials that the peacekeeping mission in East Timor was dominated by white Westerners.

The charge was made by N. Parameswaran, a Malaysian who resigned this week as chief of staff of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

Parameswaran's resignation – three days before the end of his contract – was reported by the New Straits Times of Malaysia in an article published Thursday under the headline "The White Rajah".

Writing to the editor of the New Straits Times, Shashi Tharoor, interim head of the UN's department of public information, said the report was "as inaccurate as it is offensive".

It "makes the accusation that the UN mission lacks equitable geographical distribution among its staff," Tharoor wrote, adding that "there are implicit suggestions of racism." In his letter, released here, Tharoor noted that 22 percent of the international staff of UNTAET were from Europe, 21 percent from the Americas, 21 percent from Asia, 19 percent from Africa and 17 percent from elsewhere.

"One may well wish the proportion of Asians to be higher, and in more senior positions," Tharoor wrote, but the mission was going through "a drastic downsizing" and it was difficult to maintain geographical balance.

UNTAET was set up in October 1999 after local militiamen laid waste to East Timor, which had voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from Indonesia in a referendum organised by the UN. The mission's military force is to be halved and its civilian staff cut by 75 percent before the territory achieves independence on May 20 this year.

Tharoor noted that until Parameswaran's resignation, the four most senior officials in UNTAET were a Brazilian, a New Zealander, a Malaysian and a Thai – the military commander. "That hardly suggests Western dominance," he wrote.

On Thursday, East Timor's foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta criticised Parameswaran, saying: "I do not believe that it is proper for UN officials, or diplomats, to engage in mud slinging in public".

Romas-Horta, a Nobel peace prize winner, said many people had devoted months to making UNTAET "a considerable success" including Parameswaran and other non-whites.

"I do not think that it is fair to say that this is a white-dominated mission," he said in a statement.