A REPUBLICAN Congressman who pioneered legislation for the protection of children from predatory adults resigned last night after it was disclosed that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to underage male interns.

Mark Foley, who held a Florida district for six terms in the House of Representatives, has left his party in the lurch five weeks before the mid-term Congressional elections on November 7. The Democrats must make a net gain of 15 seats to regain control of the House for the first time since 1994.

Until yesterday, Mr Foley’s district, which he held with 68 per cent of the vote two years ago, had not even been mentioned as part of a “watch list” of seats vulnerable to the Democrats. But last night lawyers from both parties were examining Florida election laws to see if it was too late to remove his name from the ballot.

Mr Foley, the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children, said that he would resign immediately after ABC News reported that he had sent messages to current and former congressional pages that allegedly contained repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

“Today I have delivered a letter to the Speaker of the House informing him of my decision to resign from the US House of Representatives, effective today,” he said. “I am deeply sorry and I apologise for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”

Mr Foley was the author of the key sexual predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which President Bush signed into law in July this year. But one of the e-mails he sent to a 16-year-old Congressional intern was described by the recipient as “sick sick sick”. Saying that the e-mails had “freaked me out”, he passed on his concerns to staff on Capitol Hill.

The Congressional page programme was started in the 1800s and allows juniors from high school to work on Capitol Hill after school or over the summer. The young man in question did not work in Mr Foley’s office but his e-mail exchange is understood to have begun after he left when he asked Mr Foley for a reference.

ABC news yesterday published extracts of some of the correspondence in which Mr Foley wrote: “Did you have fun at your conference . . . what do you want for your birthday . . . what stuff do you like to do?” In another, he wrote: “How are you weathering the hurricane . . . are you safe . . . send me an e-mail pic of you as well.”

Initially, Mr Foley’s office said that the Congressman was guilty only of being “too friendly” with young people, adding that it was their policy to keep pictures of anyone who asked for a reference. This defence allegedly crumbled when it became clear the news organisation also had e-mails from Mr Foley’s AOL account that contained references to sex acts.

Mr Foley, 52, had previously decided against running for the Senate in 2003 when rumours surfaced that he was gay. He asked for “a right to privacy” while conceding, “the fact that I’m not married has led many people to speculate”. He was one of a handful of Republicans who had voted for gay rights while in Congress.

His resignation overshadowed events elsewhere in the election in which George Bush suffered further setbacks in his battle to keep the focus of US voters on the threat of terrorism rather than on the mounting carnage in Iraq.

The President was facing scathing criticism of his Administration’s record in Iraq in a new book by Bob Woodward, the veteran investigative journalist who helped to expose the Watergate scandal a generation ago. Woodward’s book, State of Denial, which is published on Monday, claims that the White House ignored urgent warnings about inadequate troop numbers in Iraq and that a dysfunctional relationship has existed between senior figures within the Administration.

The book says that President Bush’s top advisers were often barely on speaking terms with each other — but shared a tendency to dismiss assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq as being too pessimistic.

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