Galloway slams US justice as he rejects charges

WASHINGTON - British MP George Galloway angrily rejected charges on Tuesday by the US Congress that he profited from the Iraq oil-for-food program as "utterly preposterous" and blasted it for treating him unfairly.

Far from showing the usual deference of witnesses before Congress, the Scotsman defiantly told a Senate committee its evidence against him was false, condemned its investigation and demanded to know why it had not checked with him first before making its allegations.

Galloway, who was elected as an independent MP in this month's UK election having been throw out of Tony Blair's Labour Party, bluntly confronted the Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota.

He challenged the attorney to back up claims the MP profited handsomely from the now defunct oil-for-food program. Some of his harshest remarks concerned Coleman's support for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"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 said.

Galloway later told reporter he felt Coleman had failed in his cross-examination. "He's not much of a lyncher," he said.

Galloway appeared before the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is examining how ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used oil to reward politicians, particularly from Russia, France and Britain, under the United Nations oil-for-food program.

He lashed out at the Bush administration for the Iraq invasion.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong," he pointedly told Coleman, whom he labeled a "neo-con, pro-war hawk".

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.

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, was not at the hearing.

The UN oil-for-food program, which began in late 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of sanctions imposed after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.

- REUTERS