- WASHINGTON - British lawmaker
George Galloway denounced U.S. senators on their home turf Tuesday, denying
accusations that he profited from the U.N. oil-for-food program and accusing
them of unfairly tarnishing his name.
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- Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., questioned Galloway's honesty
and told reporters, "If in fact he lied to this committee, there will
have to be consequences."
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- Galloway's appearance was an odd spectacle on Capitol
Hill: A legislator from a friendly nation, voluntarily testifying under
oath, without immunity, at a combative congressional hearing where neither
side showed much pretense of diplomatic niceties.
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- "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," Galloway told Coleman, chairman of the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigation subcommittee.
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- He then accused Coleman of maligning his name before
giving him a chance to defend himself and of using the oil-for-food investigation
to hide the failures of U.S. policies in Iraq.
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- "Senator, this is the mother of all smoke screens,"
he said.
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- The panel is one of several congressional committees
investigating allegations that Saddam Hussein manipulated the $64 billion
oil-for-food program to get kickbacks and build international opposition
to U.N. sanctions against Iraq imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of
Kuwait. The program was created as an exception to the sanctions, allowing
Saddam to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food and other humanitarian
items.
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- Coleman's panel last week released documents that it
says shows that Galloway and other international figures received valuable
oil allocations from Saddam to reward them for their opposition to sanctions.
The allocations could be resold for a profit.
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- Among the officials identified besides Galloway were
former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and Russian politician Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, both of whom denied wrongdoing.
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- Coleman's subcommittee claimed that Galloway funneled
allocations through the Mariam Appeal - a fund he established in 1998 to
help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia " and received
allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003. Coleman also alleged
that Galloway was linked to kickbacks to Saddam, saying the Iraqi leader
received more than $300,000 in surcharges on allocations involving Galloway.
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- Galloway vehemently rejected the accusations.
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- "You have nothing on me, senator, except my name
on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the
installation of your puppet government in Baghdad," he said.
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- He said that Coleman's panel based some of its accusations
on the same fake documents used by The Daily Telegraph newspaper, which
he sued for libel and won a $1.4 million libel judgment. The committee
says it used different documents.
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- Coleman pressed Galloway on his relationship with Jordanian
businessman Fawaz Zureikat. Galloway described Zureikat as the second largest
contributor to the Mariam Appeal, while congressional investigators consider
him Galloway's intermediary in receiving oil proceeds.
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- Asked if he knew that Zureikat was involved in oil deals
with Iraq in 2001, Galloway said he knew Zureikat was doing extensive business
in Iraq, but didn't know the details.
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- When Coleman reacted skeptically, Galloway told him,
"There are lots of contributors to your political campaign funds.
I don't suppose you ask any of them how they made the money they give you."
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- Galloway also said it was "beyond the realm of the
ridiculous" that he would give $300,000 in kickbacks to Saddam.
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- Speaking to reporters after the hearing, both Coleman
and the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, questioned Galloway's
credibility. Asked if Galloway violated his oath to tell the truth before
the committee, Coleman said, "I don't know. We'll have to look over
the record."
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- Galloway has been an outspoken opponent of both Iraq
wars and of the U.N. sanctions, which he said were killing innocent Iraqis.
He was expelled from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party after urging
British soldiers not to fight in Iraq. Galloway was recently re-elected
to Parliament this month as a representative of his own anti-Iraq war Respect
party.
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