posted on May 20, 2005 12:13:34 AM new
Galloway angrily rebukes US Senators' claims
17/05/2005 - 18:16:17
British anti-war MP George Galloway today angrily dismissed allegations by US senators that he profited from dealings with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Appearing in Washington before the Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations, he accused the chairman Norm Coleman of damaging his reputation around the world.
“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,” he said.
“I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever and you call that justice.”
Mr Galloway rejected a claim in the sub committee's report that he had had "many" meetings with Saddam Hussein, saying he had only met the former dictator twice.
“I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns,” he said.
“I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas,” he said.
He flatly rejected an accusation that he was the owner of a company which had made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil.
He said the lists on which his name appeared had been provided by "the convicted bank robber and fraudster and conman" Ahmed Chalabi.
“What counts is not the names on the paper. What counts is where’s the money, Senator? Who paid me money, Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars? The answer to that is nobody and if you had anybody who paid me a penny you would have produced them here today.” he said.
Mr Galloway said one of the Iraq officials who was said to have given evidence against him was being held in Iraq in the Abu Graib prison on war crimes charges.
“I am not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything which you managed to get from a prisoner in those circumstances,” he said.
Mr Galloway said the sub committee had committed a “schoolboy howler” in its presentation of the documents which had undermined its whole case.
He said it was a “proven fact” that there had been forged documents circulating linking him to the oil-for-food programme.
He described the sub-committee’s claims as the “mother of all smokescreens” intended to divert attention from the “crimes” committed in the invasion of Iraq.
“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies,” he said.
posted on May 20, 2005 07:56:44 PM new
British MP denies oil-for-food charges
Called the probe the 'mother of all smokescreens'
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Posted: 8:51 PM EDT (0051 GMT)
British Parliament member George Galloway appears Tuesday before a Senate panel.
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A British lawmaker says charges against him are "a pack of lies."
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- British Member of Parliament George Galloway angrily denied Tuesday that he profited from Saddam Hussein's regime and criticized a Senate panel probing alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Galloway, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, called the panel's investigation the "mother of all smokescreens" used to divert attention from the "pack of lies" that led to the 2003 invasion.
"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001," he told the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota.
"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives -- 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies."
He added, "Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported."
Galloway's appearance Tuesday before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee was the first by an official allegedly involved in the scandal.
In a report last week, the subcommittee stated that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein granted Galloway vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil between 2000 and 2003.
He strongly disputed that allegation Tuesday.
"I am not now or ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," Galloway testified.
He also said he did not own a company that trades in oil.
"If you had any evidence of that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this" committee today, Galloway said.
Coleman, a former district attorney, told Galloway before his sworn testimony that "senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you, in fact, received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid."
Galloway challenged that accusation in his opening statement.
"Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Coleman.
Galloway, 51, is a leading critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his alliance with President Bush in the war in Iraq. He was re-elected on an antiwar platform earlier this month.
He said he was "friendly" with former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and met him many times but that he met with Saddam only twice in his career -- in 1994 and in 2002 -- the last time to persuade Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.
He said he had met with Saddam "exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him."
"The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps," Galloway said in a heated opening statement.
"I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second occasion, I met him to try and persuade him to allow Hans Blix and U.N. inspectors back into country,"
Rumsfeld visited Baghdad to meet Saddam as President Reagan's Middle East envoy in the 1980s, when the U.S. sided with Iraq in its war with Iran. Blix was chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq before the war.
Galloway complained that the panel had determined his guilt without speaking to him.
"You have my name on lists provided to you... by the convicted bank robber and fraudster and con man Ahmed Chalabi, who many people, to their credit, in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq," Galloway told the Senate panel.
Other allegations reportedly came from Iraqi detainees.
"In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base [Afghanistan], in Guantanamo Bay -- including, if I may say, British citizens being held in those places -- I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances," he said.
Galloway said he never heard of Aredio, but confirmed that the president of Middle East ASI, Jordanian businessman named Fawaz Zureikat, was a good friend and the second-biggest benefactor of a British charity he started called Mariam's Appeal.
Zureikat donated about $600,000. A British probe of the charity "found no impropriety" in fund-raising, Galloway said.
"He may have signed an oil contract. It had nothing to do with me," Galloway said. "I was aware he was doing extensive business with Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business."
Oil ended up in U.S.
The panels seem to agree that three-quarters of the oil Iraq was permitted to export under oil-for-food ended up in the United States, though U.S. firms directly purchased less than 1 percent of the crude
