Kabul - Peter Galbraith, a senior UN envoy to Afghanistan who who was removed from his post, said his dismissal sent a "terrible signal" to the world, a news report said Thursday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday terminated Galbraith's appointment.

Galbraith, a US diplomat, said in an interview with the BBC that he believed his removal was due to disagreements with his superior, Kai Eide, over how to handle allegations of vote rigging in Afghanistan's presidential election in August.

The UN was sending a "terrible signal" to the world if it dismissed one of its representatives when he expressed concern over fraud in a poll sponsored and funded by the organization, Galbraith said.

He accused the UN of having failed its mandate by not addressing the "extensive" evidence of fraud and claimed Eide had initially tended to dismiss the fraud and did not want information disseminated.

"He didn't want the UN staff to talk about it, he didn't want us to discuss issues, for example of turnout, with the ambassadors in Kabul because we knew the turnout was very low in the southern provinces although a very large number of votes were in fact being reported
from those areas," Galbraith told the BBC.

European Union election monitors said two weeks ago that about one quarter the 5.6 million votes cast were suspicious. About 1.1 million of the dodgy votes were cast in favour of the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai.

Afghanistan's election commission declared the president won the elections in the first ballot, according to preliminary final results.

Ban had maintained until Wednesday that Galbraith would continue his appointment after weeks of news reports about the split between the two officials.

Ban expressed in a statement his "thanks to Mr Galbraith for his hard work and professional dedication."

The UN said the dismissal was in the "best interest" of the mission, but did not provide any further explanation. (dpa)