Respect MP George Galloway Appears In Front Of US Gov. Committee

WASHINGTON — The firebrand British member of Parliament who has been accused of accepting oil vouchers as part of the Oil-for-Food scandal told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday he did nothing wrong and accused the United States of diverting attention from their own crimes in Iraq by implicating him.

George Galloway said he met Saddam Hussein “as many times as [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps.

“I met [Saddam] to try and persuade him to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back in the country, a rather better use of the meetings than your own secretary of defense,” Galloway told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Investigations Subcommittee.

Galloway, who arrived in the United States late Monday night, argued that documents suggesting he got the vouchers are bogus and that the Iraqi officials who ratted him out are lying.

“You have the gall to quote a source without ever having asked me if the allegations were true, that I am the ‘owner of a company which has made substantial profits from oil for food,’” Galloway said, noting that he owns no companies besides a media firm in London.

“You had no business to carry a quotation utterly unsubstantiated and falsely implying otherwise,” he said. “You’ve already found me guilty before I have had a chance to come here and defend myself.”

Galloway previously told reporters that he feels the accusations are a political setup arranged by the Bush administration and Republicans who strongly supported the president’s war in Iraq. He also acknowledged that his relationship with former Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was friendly.

Prior to the hearing, Galloway blasted Coleman and his colleagues as being a “group of Christian fundamentalists and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of neo-con George Bush and the right-wing hawks.”

The subcommittee, led by Sen. Norm Coleman (search), R-Minn., named Galloway as the recipient of payoffs totaling 20 million barrels of oil through the corrupt Oil-for-Food program.

Speaking at the beginning of the hearing, Coleman said Galloway was allotted 20 million barrels of oil to enrich himself in exchange for his support for Saddam Hussein’s regime. Majority Counsel for the committee Mark Greenblatt then testified that the barrels came in six phases during the Oil-for-Food program.

“Saddam Hussein’s chief lieutenant, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, confirmed in an interview with the subcommittee that Galloway received allocations. In addition … Ramadan confirmed that Galloway was granted allocations, quote, ‘because of his opinions about Iraq. He wants to lift embargo against Iraq.’”

Other Saddam regime officials confirmed that Galloway received allocations, Greenblatt said. He added that one document “indicates that the recipient of this oil allocation was Mariam Appeal, the foundation established by George Galloway, ostensibly to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl named Mariam who was suffering from leukemia. Therefore, it appears that George Galloway used a children’s cancer foundation to conceal his oil transaction.”

He then said the transactions were conducted through Galloway’s agent, Fawaz Zuraiqat, a Jordanian who is president of Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc.

Galloway called the accusations a lie.

“This is beyond the realm of the ridiculous,” Galloway said, denying additional allegations that Galloway paid $300,000 for surcharges for the transaction through Mariam Appeal.

As he got off the plane in Washington on Monday night, Galloway denied the allegations and said the evidence against him was forged. But in the hearing on Tuesday, when presented with the documents exhibited by Groves, Galloway would not say one way or the other whether he thought the materials were forgeries. He did say the information in them is “fake.”

COPY from: FOX NEWS

The full report issued by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Investigations Subcommittee can be found HERE

BBC News has a link for the video of the proceedings. This can be found HERE: BBC NEWS VIDEO OF GEORGE GALLOWAY