Sales teams in Intel killed off the partnership between the One Laptop Per Child charity and the chipmaker, the New York Times has revealed.

The partners fell out after an Intel saleswoman tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization’s laptops in favor of Intel PCs.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the nonprofit effort, was furious and demanded that Intel stop what he saw as efforts to undermine the group’s sales, which meant ceasing to sell the rival computer. Intel chose instead to withdraw its support from One Laptop this week.

This was the second time that Intel had competed with the company it was supposed to be supporting. In another case, an Intel salesman gave a Mongolian government official a side-by-side comparison of the Classmate PC and the XO.

More here.