"Stop harrassing me," Michael Moore tells US government

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Documentary film director Michael Moore has accused the US government of harassing him over an investigation into a trip he made to Cuba earlier this year for his latest film, according to a story released bythe global news agency Agence France-Presse.

The US Treasury is probing whether Moore broke a 45-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba by taking a group of rescue workers from the September 11, 2001, attacks to the island for medical treatment during filming of "Sicko," his new film documenting deficiences in the US health system.

"This is harassment," Moore said: "We are going to fight this and we are going to be very aggressive to find who is behind this."

In a letter to the US Treasury on Monday, Moore's lawyer David Boies said his client had been unfairly discriminated against and demanded an explanation.

"I am concerned that Mr Moore has been selected for discriminatory treatment by your office," Boies said in the letter.

He further requested the Treasury reveal who decided to ask Moore to explain his trip.

"This is an attempt by the government to discriminate against a journalist based on the content of Michael Moore's journalistic work," Boies told reporters in New York.

Moore, who won an Oscar for the 2002 film "Bowling for Columbine," last month was asked to explain the purpose of the trip and give details including departure dates and names and addresses of those who went.

The group of rescue workers were suffering from medical conditions believed to be connected to their jobs clearing debris from the site of the World Trade Centre in New York in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks in 2001. They had been previously unable to afford proper treatment within the US medical health system.

In Cuba, the rescuers were treated free of charge under the Communist country's government supported free universal health program.

The new Moore documentary explores this and various other deficiences in American health care and compares it with the system put in place by the Castro regime for all its citizens.