US: In a riveting performance before a Senate panel in Washington, British anti-war MP George Galloway lacerated the US administration for its invasion of Iraq and vehemently denied that he had benefited from contracts issued by Saddam Hussein in the oil-for-food programme.
"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Mr Galloway told the committee chaired by Republican Senator Norm Coleman. "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas," he added, using his appearance to turn the hearing into a tirade against the war.
"I gave my heart and soul to stop you from committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq," Mr Galloway said, "and I told the world that the case for war was a pack of lies."
Last week the British MP was named in a report from the committee as the beneficiary of the right to trade oil contracts worth $20 million (€15.8 million) on which it was implied he would make a lucrative commission.
It also claimed that Mr Galloway funnelled allocations through a fund he established in 1998 to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia, and that he received total allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.
He forcefully rejected this and accused Senator Coleman of maligning his good name.
Senator Coleman later raised questions about the truthfulness of Mr Galloway's testimony.
"If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," he told reporters after the hearing. It is unclear however if the committee can impose any sanctions on a parliamentarian outside the jurisdiction of the US.
Senator Coleman said he did not know if Mr Galloway had lied under oath. "I don't know. We'll have to look over the record. I just don't think he was a credible witness."
The subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs has become the focus on Capitol Hill for criticism of the United Nations and the corruption surrounding the oil-for-food programme. Its members seemed taken aback when Mr Galloway decided last week to challenge what was being released in committee reports by making a public appearance.
"To ask me to come and speak to them after they have already denounced me is perverse to say the least. Even in Kafka there was a trial of sorts," he said.
The committee is investigating how Saddam and outside contractors made billion of dollars in illegal oil sales under the oil-for-food programme, designed to allow Iraqi oil sales to alleviate suffering caused by UN sanctions.
Mr Coleman said Mr Galloway and others who received oil allocations paid "kickbacks" to the Iraqi dictator as part of the scheme. "Senior Hussein regime officials informed the subcommittee that the allocation holders - in this case, Mr Galloway - were ultimately responsible for the surcharge payment and therefore would have known of the illegal, under-the-table payment," Mr Coleman said.
The British MP accused Senator Coleman of never having contacted him about the charges.
"It's exactly the same story this time," said Mr Galloway before the hearing. "The only new material seems to be some quotes attributed to Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was the vice president of Iraq and who is a prisoner of the US army and is currently facing the death penalty. I have never met him."
The Senate report alleges that it was Mr Galloway's representatives who solicited oil vouchers rather than the MP himself and that the money was paid to companies in which he had an interest. He said the evidence compiled by the committee was "stunningly thin, one of those dodgy dossiers".
Regarding his association with Fawaz Zureikat, a businessman who traded with Iraq, who has admitted accepting oil contracts from Saddam Hussein, Mr Galloway said that he was chairman of the Miriam appeal but he was known to and had helped "virtually every British journalist that passed through Baghdad".
The Miriam appeal's principal benefactor was Zureikat, a businessman who made money trading in Iraq. "This is open to criticism but that is all," said Mr Galloway. "None of those individuals ever gave me a penny."
The committee has also turned a new focus on a Texas-based oil company, Bayoil, which was involved in the oil-for-food schemes. "On the one hand, the United States was at the UN trying to stop Iraq from imposing illegal surcharges on oil-for-food contracts," Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said at the start of the hearing.
"On the other hand, the US ignored red flags that some US companies might be paying those same illegal surcharges."
Documents released by the minority Democrats on the committee also showed that the Iraqi regime smuggled more than 7 million barrels of oil out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, apparently with US knowledge, in the weeks before the invasion in 2003.
Bayoil imported some 200 million barrels over two years starting in September 2000 and sold it to US oil companies, the report said. The report claimed that Bayoil paid "directly or indirectly" some $37 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein at a time when US officials were aware of what was going on.
Bayoil then sold the crude to US companies, though there is no evidence the companies knew about the kickbacks, the report said.