Labour MP faces new Saddam claims

Labour MP George Galloway faced fresh allegations about his links to Saddam Hussein today.

The Daily Telegraph reproduced a memo it claimed was from a senior aide to the Iraqi dictator in which he turned down a request from Mr Galloway for more money, saying the Labour MP’s “exceptional” demands were unaffordable.

Mr Galloway has strenuously denied receiving or seeking money from Saddam’s regime and has threatened to sue the newspaper.

The Daily Telegraph claimed yesterday that the MP profited from the United Nations oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

The claim was based on a memo allegedly from an Iraq intelligence official found in Baghdad and published yesterday.

But Mr Galloway said any documents purporting to show this were forgeries planted to try to discredit him.

The fresh allegations today came as Mr Galloway faced an investigation into the Mariam Appeal, the campaign fund at the centre of the allegations he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein.

The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was examining claims that money from the appeal – set up by Mr Galloway in 1998 – had been misused, The Times said.

The newspaper said Lord Goldsmith was studying a complaint based on an article showing Mr Galloway promised to spend all the money raised by the appeal on treating sick Iraqi children but later used it to fund his travelling expenses.

Mr Galloway has said the appeal’s accounts would now be thrown open for the first time.

As the appeal is not a registered charity it has not been obliged to publish accounts.

Telegraph editor Charles Moore said today that the newspaper stood by its story and would “look forward” to a legal battle with Mr Galloway.

The newspaper has already received a letter from Mr Galloway’s lawyers.

Speaking on GMTV, he said: “We certainly have had a legal letter and no doubt things will go forward from there. We look forward to that.

“We will defend our journalism robustly. I think it is excellent journalism and a fantastic scoop.”

Mr Moore said journalist David Blair had been acting on his own initiative when he entered the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

“It is just fine journalism.

“Our journalist David Blair had the good sense to see that there might be interesting material in the Foreign Ministry – he didn’t need anybody to tell him and nobody told him that and nobody showed him anything there either.”

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith called for a parliamentary investigation into Mr Galloway’s financial affairs.

Speaking to reporters during a walking tour of Shrewsbury Town Centre in the run-up to next week’s local elections, Mr Duncan Smith said: “If he (Mr Galloway) clears his name, then fine. But I do think there needs to be an investigation by the privileges committee.

“If he does not clear his name then he has committed a crime. I say crime because if it is true that he took money from the oil-for-food programme, it is a crime against humanity. That was money for food for the people in Iraq, it was not for George Galloway.”

Haitham Rashid Wihaib, the former head of protocol for Saddam Hussein, said today he recognised the area inside the Iraqi Foreign Ministry where David Blair found the documents.

“These are real documents. There is no doubt that these documents are genuine,” he told GMTV.

He added that the former Iraqi regime had greatly valued the support of visiting politicians and journalists.

Mr Galloway has been an outspoken critic of war in Iraq, describing Tony Blair and US president George Bush as “wolves” and urging soldiers not to fight.

Labour officials, who were already examining those remarks, yesterday launched a new probe into the Telegraph’s claims.

However, suggestions that he took at least £375,000 (€540) a year from the regime have met with emphatic denials from Mr Galloway.

Speaking from his villa in Burgau, Portugal, he insisted the paperwork must have been forged as part of a smear campaign.

Mr Galloway said he may have been in Baghdad in Christmas 1999, just days before the date given on the first memo of January 2000, but that showed he was innocent.

“I’m prepared for argument’s sake to concede I was in Baghdad. I spent a Christmas Day either in 99 or 2000 with Tariq Aziz which makes the point I have just made,” he told BBC’s Newsnight.

“If I were in a frame of mind to discuss business with the regime in Iraq I would have done it on Christmas Day with Tariq Aziz rather than with a junior intelligence officer on Boxing Day.

" I can tell you to the best of my knowledge I haven’t ever met an Iraqi intelligence officer and I have never solicited money from one.”

Mr Galloway said he intended to stand as an independent candidate if he was not selected to stand as a potential Labour MP.

His Glasgow Kelvin seat disappears due to boundary changes at the next election.

But he said: “I shall seek the nomination in the Glasgow central constituency if the members are allowed to do so ... I think I can confidently predict that they will select me.

“If we are cheated of that right, then of course I will defend that seat as an independent.”