Brit MP to sue over Iraq claim

2003-04-22 16:44

London - Controversial British MP George Galloway, who has fiercely opposed the war against Iraq, on Tuesday said he would sue a newspaper which claimed he was paid more than half a million dollars a year by Saddam Hussein's regime.

"I have never solicited, nor would I have accepted had I been offered, any financial assistance of any kind from the Iraqi regime," Galloway, a member of the ruling Labour Party, told BBC television.

"This is a pile of black propaganda, intelligence hocus pocus and the Daily Telegraph have either been a party to it or they have been hoodwinked by it," the Scottish MP said.

"But either way, they will answer for it in front of the British courts."

In a front-page report from Baghdad, the Daily Telegraph said its reporter had found a memo in the Iraqi foreign ministry indicating that Galloway took a slice of Iraq's oil earnings worth £375 000 ($587 500) a year.

Labour party chairperson Ian McCartney called the allegations "extremely serious," adding that they would be investigated by the party.

Galloway, 48, was nicknamed "the MP for Baghdad Central" for his personal relationship with Saddam and vocal opposition to the US-led war to overthrow the president. He has also been accused of being an apologist for the Iraqi regime.

According to the right-wing Daily Telegraph, a vigorous supporter of US policy towards Iraq, Galloway entered into a partnership with an Iraqi oil broker to sell oil on the international market.

The Daily Telegraph said the document - a memo sent by the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam's office in January 2000 - was found by one of its journalists in the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad.

The documents suggested that while he was campaigning for his anti-war charity, the Mariam Appeal, Galloway was conducting a relationship with Iraqi intelligence behind the scenes.

"I have never in my life to my knowledge ever met an Iraqi intelligence agent," Galloway told BBC radio, speaking from his holiday home in Portugal where he is writing a book on Iraq.

"It is really very straightforward. If I had sold oil under the oil-for-food programme and sold food to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme, the cheques would have been written by the United Nations in New York," the MP said.

"So all we will have to do is check with the UN whether they have ever written me any cheques, when they wrote them and where the money went. And no such thing ever happened."

Galloway was among a number of Labour MPs who addressed Britain's biggest anti-war demonstration on February 15. Nearly a million protesters turned out, according to police figures, a little over a month before London and Washington declared war on Iraq.

Married to a Palestinian, Galloway has long campaigned for an end to the 12-year-old UN sanctions imposed on Iraq.

He also built a close relationship with Iraq's leadership following the 1991 Gulf War, visiting Baghdad a number of times.

During a trip there in August, he interviewed Saddam for Britain's Mail on Sunday weekly, revealing in his article how the dictator offered him Quality Street chocolates and told of his admiration for British buses.

In 1998 Galloway set up the Mariam Appeal to fly young Iraqi leukaemia sufferer Mariam Hamza to Britain for treatment. The MP blamed uranium-tipped weapons used by coalition forces in the first Gulf War for her condition.

Last year, British junior foreign minister Ben Bradshaw described Galloway as "not just an apologist but a mouthpiece for the Iraqi regime over many years."

Bradshaw later apologised for his remarks.

- AFX