Charles Pasqua i Georges Galloway acusats pel Senat nord-americà d'haver rebut suborns de Saddam Hussein

Charles Pasqua, l'amic de Chirac, exministre de l'Interior del país que va encapçalar l'oposició a la guerra contra Saddam Hussein, i Georges Galloway, el diputat laborista i líder anti-guerra britànic, tenien una raó de pes per oposar-se als Estats Units: més de 30 milions de barrils de petroli regalats per Saddam Hussein. Una comissió del Senat dels EUA ha aportat noves dades que demostrarien aquestes acusacions de suborn. Aquí us penjo un extracte d'un despatx de Reuters d'aquesta matinada.

A U.S. Senate committee said on Thursday that British parliamentarian George Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua benefitted from the U.N. oil-for-food programme for Iraq. A report by the non-partisan committee said Galloway had been given "allocations" for 20 million barrels of oil while Pasqua got 11 million barrels, with the personal approval of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.(...)
"All told, this report paints a disturbing picture of the dark underside of the oil-for-food programme," said Republican Sen. Norm Coleman from Minnesota in a statement accompanying the report by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the Oil for Food Programme on its head and used the programme to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," he added. The Iraqi government awarded lucrative oil rights or allocations to favoured politicians and government officials which could then be sold to traders for up to 30 cents a barrel. However, the report does not provide evidence of bank accounts showing the two men actually received funds.(...)
The committee report released numerous documents, some of them hand-written, from the Saddam-era Ministry of Oil that identified Pasqua and Galloway as allocation recipients. The report also indicated Galloway may have used a children's cancer foundation in connection with at least one of his allocations -- a charge he said had already been investigated and dismissed in Britain.
Since the end of the war, Iraq has released lists and charts of oil vouchers and kickbacks by Saddam's government, which Charles Duelfer, a former CIA weapons inspector, publicized last year. The lists give legitimate contracts but are also a who's who of political groups and individuals from whom the former Iraqi government wanted to buy influence while under U.N. sanctions. Pasqua and Galloway are among the many on the list. According to the report, former Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, told the Senate subcommittee last month that Galloway had been granted oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq" and because he was in favour of lifting the sanctions. Duelfer, in an extensive report in October, found that corruption in the $64 billion U.N. oil-for-food program amounted to some $1.7 billion. But he said Saddam made most of his money, another $8 billion, through oil exports outside of the program.