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British MP rips US on Iraq war, allegations
about UN Oil for Food Program Associated Press, May 17, 2005 EXCERPTS WASHINGTON - Ripping into the Bush administration and a senator who
called a hearing on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, British lawmaker George
Galloway rejected charges he profited from the U.N.-sanctioned program and
called the allegations "the mother of all
smokescreens." “I
am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader, and neither has anyone on my
behalf,” he told the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as he
began refuting the committee’s accusations that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein gave him credits to export Iraqi oil. “I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one,
sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf,” Galloway said, claiming that
the documents the Senate subcommittee relied on had been forged and were proven
as such in Britain. Senator
called 'cavalier' Addressing the Republican chairman of the
committee, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, he added: “Now I know that standards
have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are
remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.” Galloway
was a witness before the committee that is examining how Saddam used oil to
reward politicians, particularly from Russia, France and Britain, under the
United Nations oil-for-food program.
He called the
Bush administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq "a pack of
lies" and said investigators should instead focus on U.S. companies that
dealt with Saddam. "The real sanctions busters were your own
companies," he told senators. Galloway,
a maverick kicked out of the British Labor Party for his fervent opposition to
the Iraq war and for personal attacks on Prime Minister Tony Blair, has
dismissed allegations by the committee that he benefited from the program. The
committee last week released documents it said showed Saddam gave Galloway the
rights to export 20 million barrels of oil under the defunct humanitarian
program. 'Republican
lynch mob' Pursued by a crowd of British
journalists, Galloway arrived at the hearing just minutes before it began
reviewing testimony. “This group of neocons (neoconservatives) is involved
in the mother of all smokescreens,” he said of the committee. “I want to turn the
tables on this neocon, pro-Israel, pro-war, Republican lynch mob.” He earlier told Reuters that he had "no expectation of
justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under
the chairmanship of a neocon (President) George Bush who is pro-war.” “I come not as the accused but as the accuser,”
he added. “It’s Mr. Coleman who’s been all over the news and
he’s a lick-spittle, crazed neocon who is engaged in a witch hunt against all
those he perceives to have betrayed the United States in their plan to invade
and occupy Iraq,” Galloway told Associated Press Television News. “I’m not going there to
change the minds of the committee, but to appeal
to public opinion and to show just how absurd this report is,” he said. “Justice George Bush style ... is what I expect from the rightwing hawks
in Washington.” Former
French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, now a French senator, also was named
in the Senate report, which said he got vouchers for 11 million barrels.
Pasqua, who also angrily denied the allegations, will not be at the hearing. U.S.
looked other way? In both cases, the Houston-based firm Bayoil Inc. or its subsidiaries helped arrange
transport and contracts to sell the oil in the United States and elsewhere,
according to the report, which was released by the minority Democrats on
Coleman’s subcommittee. The new
document studied two issues: Bayoil’s involvement in oil-for-food and a single
instance that saw Saddam’s regime smuggle more than 7 million barrels of oil
out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, apparently with U.S. knowledge, in the
weeks before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Democrats
on the committee said the report suggested that Washington looked the other way
as Bayoil bought Iraqi crude and sold it to American refineries. “We’ve got to look in the mirror at
ourselves as well as point fingers at others,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told
reporters. The
report found that Bayoil imported some 200 million barrels over two years
starting in September 2000 and sold it to U.S. oil companies. That was at a
time when Saddam was trying to tinker with the price of oil so that when he
sold it, companies could be compelled to pay him kickbacks. The
report claimed that Bayoil
paid “directly or indirectly” some $37 million in kickbacks to Saddam even at a
time that the United States and other members of the council had realized what
Saddam was doing and began ordering price hikes to quash the kickbacks scheme. Bayoil then sold the crude to U.S.
companies, though there is no evidence the companies knew about the kickbacks, the report said. Bayoil
USA owner David Chalmers’ lawyer could not immediately be located for comment
late Monday. The report said Bayoil officials had refused to cooperate with the
investigation. But Chalmers himself has denied wrongdoing in court. U.S.
office cited The committee singled out the U.S. Office
of Foreign Assets Control, which the United Nations repeatedly warned about
Bayoil’s scheme. It cited an apparent misunderstanding in which U.S.
authorities assumed the United Nations would monitor individual companies,
while at the United Nations, oil-for-food officials thought that was the
responsibility of national governments. The
report’s focus on the single instance of oil smuggling, through Khor al-Amaya,
was meant to illustrate how Saddam sold oil outside oil-for-food. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7883488/ |
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