UNITED NATIONS — Senate investigators examining corruption in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program for Iraq released a report Wednesday alleging that Saddam Hussein tried to buy the influence of two senior officials of Britain and France.
The names of former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British politician George Galloway emerged more than a year ago on a list of influential people who allegedly were granted the right by the Hussein government to buy discounted oil to sell at a profit. The Senate report contains new testimony from Iraqi officials and documents from Iraq's Oil Ministry.
One letter from an Iraqi oil official included in the report says Pasqua's aide asked Iraq to channel his oil through a Swiss company because Pasqua feared "political scandal." An Iraqi Oil Ministry document said Galloway appeared to use a charity for child leukemia to shelter money from an oil transaction.
Pasqua and Galloway have denied that they received oil allocations from the Iraqis or profited from oil trades, and their statements were included in the Senate report. Spokesmen for the French and British missions at the U.N. declined to comment.
The bipartisan Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is one of five congressional groups examining the United Nations' $64-billion aid program, which was meant to ease the effect of sanctions on Iraq from 1996 to 2003.
Rather than grant contracts to energy companies, Iraq allocated oil rights to prominent foreign officials who the regime believed could rally international support for Iraq and against U.N. sanctions, said senior Iraqi officials interviewed by the committee. The recipients could then sell the rights to oil traders.
"This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the oil-for-food program on its head and used the program to reward his political allies, like Pasqua and Galloway," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R- Minn.), chairman of the subcommittee, who has called for Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign over the mismanagement of the humanitarian program.
The Senate investigators questioned former Iraqi officials now in custody, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. The report also draws on interviews with former regime officials conducted by the Treasury Department's Iraqi Financial Asset Team, which has been trying to trace the money allegedly kicked back in the oil-for-food program.
