Ramin-Osmundsen, a lawyer and the first foreigner to hold this post, is accused of having been aware of the illegal granting of residence permits last year to 182 Iraqi Kurds in violation of guidelines by the then centre-right government.

Ramin-Osmundsen, from the French Antilles islands in the Caribbean and married to a Norwegian, had been in her new post only two months.

At the time the 182 permits were issued she was deputy head of the department and claimed she had not been immediately informed of what had happened.

But in a report published Monday a committee of enquiry said it was highly probable she did in fact know of circumstances which had overstepped the bounds of legality, even if she had not taken an active role in the decision-making.

"She has reached the conclusion that it would be difficult for her to head the immigration department, faced with the challenge of restoring relations of confidence indispensable to good political management of refugee and immigration affairs," said Labour and Social Affairs Minister Bjarne Haakon Hanssen.