VOLKSWAGEN'S MONKEY BUSINESS

FRANKFURT : Automaker Volkswagen has suspended a top executive in response to a widespread public criticism over experiments in which monkeys were exposed to diesel exhaust.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that Thomas Steg, head of government relations and sustainability was stepping aside and away from his duties at his own request.

The statement from the automaker said that the company was ''drawing the first consequences'' as it investigates the activities of EUGT, the entity backed by Volkswagen and other carmakers that commissioned the monkey experiment.

Steg has said in the Bild newspaper that he had known about the experiment but did not inform the  company's then-CEO Martin Winterkorn.

Steg said he rejected an initial proposal to use human volunteers and said that even after animals were substituted the experiment ''should not have taken place.''

The move follows a report in The new York times that the now-disbanded EUGT  commissioned the  2014  Monkey test at the Lovelace Respiratory Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to measure-

How Volkswagen diesel technology was succeeding in controlling harmful emissions.

Diluted exhaust gases from a late-model Volkswagen vehicle fed into chambers where the monkeys were exposed for four hours.

- [AP]