MP denies Saddam payments

Labour MP George Galloway today furiously denied that he had received vast sums of money from the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Galloway threatened court action after he was confronted with documents suggesting that he had been paid out of Iraq's oil earnings to the tune of £375,000 a year or more. He dismissed the papers, found in the wreckage of the office of the Iraqi foreign minister, as a forgery and a smear.

Mr Galloway, 48, has been a vocal defender of the Iraqi regime and a critic of British and American action against Saddam for more than a decade. He faces disciplinary action and possible expulsion as a Labour MP for his opposition to the war but until now there have been no allegations that he was funded by the regime.

That is what is alleged in the documents unearthed in Baghdad and published in the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Galloway, speaking from his holiday home in Portugal, said the allegations were libellous and he would instruct his lawyers to begin legal action. The idea that such documents had come to light "as if to order" just days after the assault on Baghdad and the looting of its ministries was "highly suspect", he said.

"From the way they have been described to me, they bear all the hallmarks of having either been forged or doctored and are designed to discredit those who stood against the war."

The key paper is a memorandum, sent by Saddam's spy chief to the Iraqi leader's office. It claims Mr Galloway held talks, on Boxing Day 1999, with an Iraqi spy and told him he needed "continuous financial support".

The memo goes on: "He obtained through Mr Tariq Aziz (Saddam's deputy prime minister) three million barrels of oil every six months, according to the oil for food programme. His share would only be between ten and 15 cents per barrel." That slice out of the oil sales would have totalled some £375,000 per year.

The document alleges Mr Galloway was associated with a named Iraqi oil broker to sell the oil. It continues: "He (Galloway) also obtained a limited number of food contracts with the ministry of trade. The percentage of its profits does not go above one per cent."

Mr Galloway today said he had never met a member of Iraqi intelligence, adding: "I have never in my life seen a barrel of oil, let alone owned, bought or sold one."

The Telegraph's reporter in Baghdad says he found the documents in a pile of smoke-blackened files deep inside the Iraqi foreign ministry. Among them, his translator discovered an orange box file, labelled "Britain" in Arabic with its interior lined with tiger skin wallpaper.

Inside lay four blue folders, stamped with the Iraqi eagle, containing a variety of documents including a letter from Sir Edward Heath thanking Iraq's representative in London for attending a lunch in the former Prime Minister's constituency of Salisbury.

Another was a letter from Mr Galloway nominating a Jordanian, Fawaz Zureikat, as his representative in Baghdad. The letter says Mr Zureikat is to act on behalf of the Mariam Appeal, the charity set up by Mr Galloway and named after an Iraqi child he flew to Britain for leukaemia treatment.

Alongside that was the memo - under an Iraqi Intelligence Service heading but with an illegible signature - which describes the alleged arrangements for Mr Galloway to benefit from the oil programme.

Headed "confidential and personal", it stresses that payments must be made under "commercial cover". It also says that Mr Galloway asked for more money, asserting: "He suggested to us the following: first, increase his share of oil; second, grant him exceptional commercial and contractual facilities".