US: British MP George Galloway said yesterday he planned to appear before a US Senate sub-committee in Washington on Tuesday to defend himself against claims he made money from the Iraqi oil-for-food programme.
"Book the flights, let's go, let's give them both barrels," his spokesman quoted him yesterday as saying, adding quickly: "That's guns, not oil."
The Senate panel invited Mr Galloway to appear at its May 17th hearing after the MP denied charges that he profited from the UN oil-for-food programme because of his anti-war views.
The chairman of the committee, Republican Senator Norm Coleman, said: "The hearing will begin promptly at 9.30am and there will be a witness chair and microphone available for Mr Galloway's use." Mr Galloway said he had repeatedly written and e-mailed the committee seeking to appear to testify to his innocence but had received no response. "They did not ask me a single question, they did not write to me, they have not spoken to me and they know nothing about me," he said.
Senator Coleman denied this, saying: "Contrary to his assertions, at no time did Mr Galloway contact the Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon." He added: "I would be pleased to have Mr Galloway appear at the sub-committee's May 17th hearing entitled, Oil For Influence: How Saddam Used Oil to Reward Politicians and Terrorist Entities Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program."
A spokesman for Mr Galloway said that assuming they could get visas and flights in time, he fully intended to take up the invitation to appear at the hearing next Tuesday and "confront the Joe McCarthy committee".
Senator Coleman and Democrat Carl Levin stated jointly in a staff report yesterday that the committee had documents and testimonies from former Iraqi officials showing Mr Galloway and former French interior minister Charles Pasqua received "lucrative oil allocations" from former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Ex-Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan gave testimony to the committee that Mr Galloway - a strong opponent of the US-led invasion - received the oil contracts "because of his opinions about Iraq".
Mr Galloway called the allegations "absurd", and said he had never traded, or even seen, a barrel of oil in his life. He told BBC radio: "It doesn't matter how long you repeat a falsehood, it doesn't become other than a falsehood." The former Labour MP, re-elected last week for his Respect Party, won a libel action against the Daily Telegraph in December over claims relating to the oil-for-food programme. Last month the newspaper won permission to appeal against the ruling to pay £150,000 damages and £1.2 million in costs.
Mr Pasqua also denied the allegations saying he had not received "any advantages whatsoever, in any form, from the Iraqi authorities or the regime of Saddam Hussein". He underlined that he had not held a government post since 1995, while the $64 billion scheme ran from 1996 to 2003.
The Senate committee claimed to have evidence that Mr Galloway and Mr Pasqua "were granted lucrative oil allocations under the United Nations Oil for Food Program". It stated that "Pasqua received 11 million barrels in oil allocations, while Galloway received allocations of 20 million barrels of oil" as part of a plan to influence foreign officials and maximise Iraq's influence around the world, and claimed they earned from 3 to 30 cents per barrel.
The report cited "numerous documents from the Hussein-era Ministry of Oil that expressly identify Charles Pasqua and George Galloway as allocation recipients".
It claims that Mr Pasqua sought to conceal the transactions because he feared political scandals and Mr Galloway may have used a children's cancer foundation in connection with at least one of his allocations.
In a BBC interview the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, asked: "Don't you think the British security services would have known I, George Galloway MP, was becoming a billionaire trading in oil and don't you think if they did, they would not have told anybody?"
The oil-for-food programme was intended to alleviate starvation among Iraqis suffering under UN sanctions imposed after the 1990-91 Gulf War. The May 17th hearing is intended to hear evidence how Saddam Hussein manipulated the programme "to win influence and reward friends in order to undermine sanctions", the committee said. "In particular, this hearing will present evidence detailing how Saddam rewarded foreign officials with lucrative oil allocations that could be converted to money. The hearing will also examine the illegal surcharges paid on Iraqi oil sales, using examples involving the recently indicted US company, Bayoil."
Senator Coleman of Minnesota is a strong critic of the UN who on December 1st published a blistering Wall Street Journal article calling for the resignation of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He wrote that "the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."