Maverick MP seeks to clear name in Iraq scandal

WASHINGTON - Independent British MP George Galloway has agreed to testify before a US Senate panel "with both barrels" to dispute allegations Saddam Hussein awarded him the right to buy oil.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a new report on fraud in the now-defunct UN oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq, released documents saying Galloway got rights to 20 million barrels in oil, personally approved by ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The same 96-page report said Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister and now a senator, got 11 million barrels. Both men denied the allegations, which have surfaced earlier, but with less documentation.

"I'll be there to give them both barrels - verbal guns, of course, not oil -- assuming we get the visas. I welcome the opportunity to clear my name," Galloway said in London.

"My first words will be 'Senator, it's a pity that we are having this interview after you have found me guilty. Even in Kafka there was the semblance of a trial,'" Galloway said.

The Senate plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday and "there will be a witness chair and microphone available for Mr. Galloway's use," said a spokesman for Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republic, who chairs the panel.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from late 1996 to 2003 allowed Baghdad to sell oil to buy basic goods to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of sanctions imposed when Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the oil-for-food program on its head and used the program to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," Coleman said.

His report, however, did not provide evidence of bank accounts showing Galloway and Pasqua actually received funds.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked if Britain would investigate the allegations, said: "We've no plans to do that."

Galloway, newly elected to the British Parliament as a left-wing anti-Iraq war independent after Blair's Labor Party expelled him over his outspoken opposition to the conflict, said the claims were absurd.

"Why am I not surprised? Let me repeat: I have never traded in a barrel of oil or any vouchers for it," Galloway said, adding he had written to the committee to rebut the allegations but had not received a response.

But Coleman's communications director, Tom Steward said, Galloway had never tried to contact the subcommittee "by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, email, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon."

According to the report, Saddam's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, told the Senate subcommittee last month that Galloway had been granted oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq" and because he backed lifting sanctions.

- REUTERS