US high official quits after call-girl ring probe

A senior U.S. State Department official in charge of foreign aid programs abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a suspected Washington call-girl ring, media reports said Sunday.

Randall Tobias, director of U.S. foreign assistance and administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "that he must step down" for personal reasons, the State Department said in an announcement, without giving further details.

But on Friday night, ABC News said Tobias, whose resignation was effective immediately, had confirmed on Thursday that he had called the Pamela Martin and Associates escort service several times "to have gals come over the condo to give me a massage."

Tobias, 65, who is married, insisted that he used the service for massages, not sex, according to ABC News' website.

The Pamela Martin and Associates escort service is owned by Jeane Palfrey, who has been called the "D.C. Madam," and faces federal charges of running a prostitution operation in the Washington area from 1993 through August 2006.

She has pleaded not guilty to charges and has threatened on her website to sell her client list to raise money for her defense. ABC News reported that Palfrey had given the network thousands of phone numbers of clients.

In court papers filed on April 11 in Federal District Court, she identified an adviser to the Pentagon as ¡°one of the regular customers¡± of her service. Tobias was the second public figure identified as a customer of her service.

Tobias was nominated by President Bush in July 2003 to lead a 15 billion U.S. dollars program to fight AIDS worldwide. His rank was equivalent to deputy secretary of state.

On Wednesday Tobias was at the White House, where President Bush praised his efforts coordinating global AIDS relief.

Source: Xinhua/agencies