Two European politicians on Thursday denied accusations from a U.S. Senate committee that Saddam Hussein's regime allocated them millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support, and a House panel released documents purportedly showing how Iraq used the program to curry favor with France and Russia.
The allegations against British lawmaker George Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in a report in October by U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer.
But Wednesday's Senate report provided new details. Sen. Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who heads the committee, claimed Saddam also approved Pasqua's allocations himself.
Galloway called the claim "patently absurd" and said he would appear before the committee Tuesday to defend himself.
"I'll be telling them that they are liars and that they have made a fool of America, which is supposed to be a land where justice prevails," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I've been pronounced guilty of this all without a single question asked of me."
Galloway, who was expelled from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party after urging British soldiers not to fight in Iraq, won re-election to Parliament last week as a representative of his own anti-Iraq war Respect party.
On Thursday, he lambasted the Senate committee for its methods.
"The parliamentary committee never spoke to me, never wrote to me, never asked me a single question. How it can therefore be described as an investigations committee is simply perplexing. I've been pronounced guilty of this all without a single question asked of me."
Pasqua said he has already repeatedly denied having "received any benefit whatsoever in whatever form from the authorities or the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein."
The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, was designed to let Saddam's government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods to help the Iraqi people cope with crippling U.N. sanctions.
But Saddam twisted the program to peddle influence by awarding favored politicians, journalists and other officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit. Details of the scheme first appeared in early 2004 when the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada published a list of about 270 people, many of them French or Russian, who were suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales.
More documents surfaced Thursday relating to the $64 billion program. There are at least four congressional probes studying the extent to which Saddam manipulated the program to peddle influence and steal billions of dollars.
Documents from a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce claim to show that in 2002, the Iraqi Intelligence Service drew up lists of French and Russian officials whom it hoped to influence.
Iraqi intelligence hoped that they would push for the U.N. to lift the crippling sanctions, imposed in 1991 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
The documents provide only limited evidence that Iraqi officials actually approached some of the Russians and French in question.
The report from the House panel a single document that it claims supports previous allegations that oil allocations were granted to ultranationalist Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He has denied taking any oil from the program.
The report also includes a document purporting to show that Iraq wanted to court several Russian officials believed close to President Vladimir Putin.
Among the names are the director of the Slavneft oil company, and a man identified as chairman of the Iraqi People's Solidarity Committee in St. Petersburg. Both Slavneft and the solidarity committee were on the list al-Mada published in early 2004.
Coleman's committee on Wednesday said Pasqua had received allocations worth 11 million barrels from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.
Pasqua, 78, headed the Interior Ministry from 1986-88 under then-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and again from 1993-95 under Edouard Balladur. Pasqua is now a senator.
Galloway called the probe a "witch hunt."
"I've never seen a barrel of oil, never bought one, never sold one, never traded one," Galloway said. "I've never traded in any commodity of any kind with Iraq. I've never profited one cent out of my work with Iraq."
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Associated Press Writers Nick Wadhams in the United Nations, Michael McDonough in London and Sophie Nicholson in Paris contributed to this report.