Galloway vows to take on Senate accusers in 'lion's den'

• US Senate publishes report claiming proof Galloway was offered financial favours by Saddam

• Newly re-elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow will fly to Washington to argue case

• Galloway claims Senate had simply regurgitated claims he had successfully disproved in the High Court last year

Key quote

"I’ll be there and I’ll be taking them on in their own lion’s den and I’ll be Daniel and I’ll be triumphant," - George Galloway MP

Story in full

GEORGE Galloway is to fly to Washington to take on the United States Senate after it published an explosive report which claims to offer proof that he was offered financial favours by Saddam Hussein.

After winning a libel case against the Daily Telegraph for similar allegations, Mr Galloway will travel to argue his case - that he never solicited money from Saddam, and any documents which claim otherwise are forgeries.

But the Senate committee yesterday claimed to have a trump card: evidence from captured Iraqi officials, including Saddam’s former vice-president, who said Mr Galloway was hand-picked for bribery.

Fresh from his stunning victory in Bethnal Green and Bow, where he defeated Labour’s Oona King on behalf of his anti-war Respect party, Mr Galloway expressed outrage at the US report.

He had repeatedly tried to give evidence in his defence, he said, but had not received "so much as a reply" from the US Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations - which he called a "lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George Bush".

The Senate committee flatly denied this, saying that it had not been contacted by Mr Galloway by any means - "telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon" and looked forward to confronting him with its findings.

The committee yesterday printed a 22-page document naming Mr Galloway and Charles Pasqua, the former interior minister of France, as recipients of Saddam’s bribery.

As part of the abuse of the oil-for-food programme, it said, Saddam was bribing officials by distributing vouchers entitling the bearer to an allocation of oil. Such vouchers could be sold to oil dealers for a straight profit.

Mr Galloway’s name was among those of 270 recipients of vouchers printed by an Iraqi newspaper in January last year. He has vigorously protested his innocence, and was awarded 150,000 damages and 1.2 million in legal costs after suing the Daily Telegraph for implying he was "in the pay" of Saddam.

But the Senate committee devoted half of its report to alleging that Mr Galloway was allocated vouchers for some 20 million barrels of oil in six separate stages between 2002 and the eve of war on 2003.

"The plan was simple: rather than granting oil allocations to traditional oil purchasers, Iraq gave priority to foreign officials, journalists and even terrorist entities," the report said.

A furious Mr Galloway spent much of yesterday on the airwaves, saying the Senate had simply regurgitated the claims he had successfully disproved in the High Court last year.

"No-one has acted on my behalf, trading in oil - Middle Eastern, olive, patchouli or any other - or in vouchers, whatever they are," he said, adding that he had tried to give evidence to the Senate committee but his request was ignored.

"Isn’t it strange and contrary to natural justice, you might think, that I have written and e-mailed repeatedly asking for the opportunity to appear before the committee to provide evidence and rebut their assumptions," he said.

Within five hours the committee responded - saying that he would be welcome to give evidence to its ongoing inquiry on Tuesday next week. Mr Galloway accepted immediately.

His spokesman quoted him as saying: "Book the flights, let’s go, let’s give them both barrels." He quickly added: "That’s guns, not oil."

Mr Galloway predicted the same success he has enjoyed taking on the Daily Telegraph and battling Ms King, whom he defeated last week with a majority of 800 votes.

"I’ll be there and I’ll be taking them on in their own lion’s den and I’ll be Daniel and I’ll be triumphant," he told the BBC. "Even in Kafka there was a trial of sorts. Here, I was pronounced guilty by a committee that is now going to hear me."

Mr Galloway’s position has been consistent: that he has "never traded in a barrel of oil, or any vouchers for it, and never seen a barrel of oil apart from the one the Sun newspaper deposited in my front garden".

But the committee’s allegation was that Mr Galloway’s representatives solicited oil vouchers, rather than the MP himself. It suggested the money was not paid to him, but companies in which he has an interest.

Its report yesterday was largely based on documents uncovered in January last year from the Iraqi oil ministry - which had 13 lists of recipients, ranging from the Kremlin to the former prime minister of Indonesia.

These are different from the documents which were found by a Daily Telegraph reporter in a burnt-out Baghdad foreign ministry building shortly after the Iraq war.

A CIA report released last October said it could now be established beyond doubt that the oil-for-food programme was used by Saddam to bribe those who could help him tie the hands of the United Nations Security Council. The Senate committee has said it has substantially more evidence than that collated by the CIA - where Mr Galloway’s name was blacked out from the published version of their report.

One document they used suggests Mr Galloway channelled at least one oil payment through the Mariam Appeal - a foundation he established to treat a four-year-old leukaemia victim, Mariam Hamze, at a Glasgow hospital.

Its key witness is Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice-president of Iraq, who was captured in Mosul by Kurdish forces in August 2003, and handed over to US troops for debriefing. He gave evidence to the committee last month.

Another unnamed official says Saddam knew that the oil allocations were being made to Mr Galloway personally.

"He was aware that Galloway received an oil allowance of three million barrels," the captured official is quoted as saying. "Galloway used a foreign company to broker the sale of the oil allowances: the Middle East Semiconducting Company [MESCC]." The head of the MESCC is named as Fawaz Zureqat, a Jordanian business partner of Mr Galloway who was also chairman of the Mariam Appeal. The two once spent Christmas together in Baghdad with Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister.

The role of the Mariam Appeal - which drew a 100,000 donation from Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - is pivotal to the committee’s investigation. It claims to have "obtained" letters proving this is the link between Saddam’s oil money and Mr Galloway.

One letter, it says, "indicated that the oil had been allocated to Mariam’s Appeal, Galloway’s purported charity". This document "indicates that Galloway may have used the charitable organisation to conceal payments from oil allocation he received from the Hussein regime".

The hearing in Washington begins at 9:30am on Tuesday.

Damning report which links MP to illegal oil trade

A summary of the committee’s report:

WE HAVE uncovered significant evidence that George Galloway was allocated millions of barrels of crude oil under the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

The evidence of Galloway’s allocations is primarily comprised of internal documents from the Saddam Hussein-era Ministry of Oil, documents from the Ministry of Oil created after the fall of the Hussein regime, interviews of senior officials of the Hussein regime conducted by the sub-committee, and interviews of Hussein regime officials conducted by the US Treasury Iraqi Financial Asset Team.

In April 2005, Taha Yassin Ramadan - the vice-president of Iraq - gave evidence that Galloway had been granted oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq" and because Galloway "wanted to lift the embargo against Iraq."

In 2003, another Hussein official told investigators that "a member of the British Parliament benefited tremendously from the illegal trade of oil by Iraq" - and specifically identified Galloway.

The allegations centre on contracts between the State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) and two companies: Aredio Petroleum (France) and Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc (Middle East ASI). The president of Middle East ASI was Fawaz Zureikat - who chaired the Mariam Appeal - and had "facilitated several oil transactions for Galloway".

The "evidence" focused on four oil allocations: the first allegedly took place on 13 January, 2001, when Aredio Petroleum executed an oil purchase contract with the state oil ministry.

A letter from SOMO indicated that the oil had been allocated to Mariam’s Appeal.

Another document said a contract had been executed with Fawaz Zureikat/George Galloway/Aredio Petroleum.

The sub-committee also claimed that surcharges were paid with the lifting of some of the barrels of oil.

On 12 December, 2001, SOMO signed a contract with Middle East ASI for three million barrels of oil - signed for by Fawaz Zureikat. SOMO indicated that the oil had been allocated to Mr Galloway, saying: "Based on the statement of allocations dated 12/10/2001, please find below the details of the contract signed with Middle East ASI Company (Mr George Galloway)/ Fawaz Zureikat." In its letter, SOMO also indicated that Middle East ASI had failed to pay any outstanding surcharges.

A few weeks later, Middle East ASI loaded 2.3 million barrels of crude oil onto an oil tanker which the sub-committee claimed "implied that Middle East ASI paid its outstanding surcharge balance", except for an outstanding $708,528.

It claims that another contract was executed with Middle East ASI for three million barrels on 3 June, 2002, with the acting executive director of SOMO indicating that the contract had been with Middle East ASI.

Despite Galloway’s denials, the evidence we have obtained - including Hussein-era documents - shows that Iraq granted him allocations for millions of barrels of oil. Moreover, evidence indicates he appeared to use a charity for children’s leukaemia to conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation.

Bollinger Bolshevik who never runs short of fizz

FROM the moment he twinned his native Dundee with Nablus, a Palestinian town famed for resistance to Israelis, George Galloway’s political career has seemed to be living on borrowed time. But no-one, it seems, is calling in the loan.

As he wings his way across the Atlantic next week to take on the United States Senate’s investigations committee, he does so having fought his way back to the House of Commons with a spectacular victory over Oona King in east London last week.

He has collected 150,000 in damages from the Daily Telegraph for suggesting he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein. So he heads to Capitol Hill with high expectations.

To his supporters, he is the most colourful character in Westminster, who is heroically standing up to Tony Blair.

But financial and sexual scandals have swarmed round the former Glasgow Kelvin MP with a passion for slick suits and well-heeled shoes.

The self-confessed Bollinger Bolshevik was born in an area of Dundee nicknamed Tipperary because of its high proportion of Irish immigrants. A job at Michelin Tyres encouraged his involvement in the Transport and General Workers’ Union and this early taste for politics carried him to the chair of the Labour Party in Scotland at the age of 26.

Fascination with the Palestinian cause has gripped his political career - in January 1994 it took him to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad where he told the Iraqi leader, on camera: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability" in the face of oil sanctions.

There are plenty of documents suggesting Saddam repaid the favour using his oil-for-food bribery system.

But Mr Galloway says such documents are forgeries, or a set-up. No-one has been able to disprove him.