Galloway angrily rebukes US Senators' claims

British anti-war MP George Galloway today angrily dismissed allegations by US senators that he profited from dealings with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Appearing in Washington before the Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations, he accused the chairman Norm Coleman of damaging his reputation around the world.

“I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice,” he said.

“I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever and you call that justice.”

Mr Galloway rejected a claim in the sub committee's report that he had had "many" meetings with Saddam Hussein, saying he had only met the former dictator twice.

“I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns,” he said.

“I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas,” he said.

He flatly rejected an accusation that he was the owner of a company which had made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil.

He said the lists on which his name appeared had been provided by "the convicted bank robber and fraudster and conman" Ahmed Chalabi.

“What counts is not the names on the paper. What counts is where’s the money, Senator? Who paid me money, Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars? The answer to that is nobody and if you had anybody who paid me a penny you would have produced them here today.” he said.

Mr Galloway said one of the Iraq officials who was said to have given evidence against him was being held in Iraq in the Abu Graib prison on war crimes charges.

“I am not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything which you managed to get from a prisoner in those circumstances,” he said.

Mr Galloway said the sub committee had committed a “schoolboy howler” in its presentation of the documents which had undermined its whole case.

He said it was a “proven fact” that there had been forged documents circulating linking him to the oil-for-food programme.

He described the sub-committee’s claims as the “mother of all smokescreens” intended to divert attention from the “crimes” committed in the invasion of Iraq.

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies,” he said.