Names named in US Iraq oil report
A US Senate report says two senior politicians from the UK and France were granted potentially lucrative oil allocations by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It says British MP George Galloway and former French minister Charles Pasqua were given the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme.
Such allocations could be sold on for a commission, although the report offers no evidence either men received money.
Both men deny claims that they were involved in such sales.
"I have never traded in a barrel of oil," said Mr Galloway, re-elected as an MP last week after campaigning against the Iraq war.
"This is a lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush."
These are the same false allegations which are still the subject of a libel action
George Galloway
He said he had "written and emailed repeatedly" requesting the opportunity to appear before the committee and rebut the claims, but they "have yet to respond".
Mr Pasqua - a French senator who served as interior minister in the 1980s and 1990s - has not yet commented on the document.
But when a former aide was questioned over the scandal last month Mr Pasqua said that he had never taken part in any sales.
Scandal
The report by a Senate committe investigating the oil-for-food scandal says Saddam Hussein's regime was keen to gain allies with influence abroad.
It alleged that Baghdad had given Mr Pasqua the right to buy 11 million barrels of oil, while Mr Galloway had received some 20 million.
The committee says it has evidence from documents drawn up by the Ministry of Oil under Saddam Hussein and interviews with "high-ranking Hussein regime officials".
The oil-for-food programme was a $60bn (£32bn) scheme set up in 1996 which was supposed to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales, without breaking the sanctions imposed on it after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The programme aimed to relieve the suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions and was formally ended in 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The scandal over the way the programme was conducted emerged in early 2004, after an Iraqi newspaper published a list of about 270 people including UN officials, politicians and companies it alleged may have profited from the illicit sale of Iraqi oil.
Libel suit
US Senate investigators latter found that Saddam Hussein's regime made $17.3bn from abuses.
About $13.6bn allegedly came from selling oil to neighbour states keen to breach the sanctions.
The programme has already been the subject of several corruption investigations.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son's work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing.
Mr Galloway won a libel suit against London's Daily Telegraph newspaper over an article relating to his alleged role in the oil for food programme.
The Senate report said the documents it used to make the allegations "have no relation" to those discussed in the Daily Telegraph piece.
For his part, Mr Galloway said: "These are the same false allegations which are still the subject of a libel action with the Daily Telegraph - so far I'm £1.6m up".
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Published: 2005/05/12 04:06:40 GMT
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