UN climate chief faces sex harassment case

A top United Nations climate change official has pulled out of a key meeting in Kenya next week as Indian police investigate a sexual harassment complaint against him, officials have said.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), withdrew due to "issues demanding his attention", the UN body said in a statement late Saturday.

The allegations come at a crucial time as Pachauri tries to set the table for a key climate change summit in Paris in December where world leaders are expected to broker a global treaty on tackling global warming.

Delhi police said Pachauri, 74, is accused of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher from his Delhi-based thinktank The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

"A lady had lodged an FIR (first information report) against him (Pachauri) for sexual harassment... about a week ago and the matter is under investigation now," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP yesterday.

The female employee, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has accused Pachauri of repeated inappropriate behaviour, including through emails, text and WhatsApp messages, according to police.

Pachauri, a leading voice on the dangers of climate change, has denied any wrongdoing, saying his emails and mobile phone were hacked.

An economist and industrial engineer by trade, the veteran climate change expert took the helm of the IPCC in 2002 and was elected to a second term in 2008.

Pachauri has also previously been in the limelight for authoring a racy novel which dished up sex, reincarnation and a real-life Hollywood actress.