EPA head resigns for personal reasons

CHRISTIE WHITMAN, sometime opponent of the Bush administration over environmental issues and a lightning rod for the administration’s critics, resigned yesterday as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Whitman said in a letter to President Bush that she was leaving to spend time with family. "As rewarding as the past two-and-a-half years have been for me professionally, it is time to return to my home and husband in New Jersey, which I love just as you do your home state of Texas," she wrote.

With Whitman's departure, Mr Bush loses one of the most prominent women in his cabinet a moderate former New Jersey governor selected by the president to help soften his image as a political conservative, particularly on environmental issues.

White House has told senior staff and cabinet members that now is the time to resign if they are thinking of leaving otherwise, they will be expected to stay until after the 2004 election, if Bush wins a second term.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer announced on Monday that he will resign in July.