Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway has thrown down a challenge to the US Senate homeland security committee to charge him with perjury, saying ‘I’ll see you in court’.
Galloway said yesterday that he was prepared to fly out immediately to the United States if Senator Coleman, who heads the committee, was prepared to bring charges.
The MP was responding to a press release from the committee which alleges that he gave ‘false and misleading testimony’ on May 17 2005, and had solicited and been granted oil allocations from Iraq under the oil-for-food programme.
Galloway said: ‘I deny that absolutely.
‘As I’ve said a thousand times, I’ve never benefited personally.
‘Let Coleman bring these charges and I’ll rebut them totally.’
He added: ‘It’s Groundhog Day. I’ve already comprehensively dealt with these allegations – under oath in the High Court and the US Senate – to the Charity Commission and in innumerable media inquiries.
‘It seems that Senator Coleman, raising them yet again, is suffering from acute attention deficit disorder. Hell clearly hath no fury than a US senator humiliated.
‘It’s a sneak revenge attack of the most contemptible kind.
‘He has not had the decency to let me know the conclusions he and his cohorts have reached, nor even that he was holding a press conference to smear me.
‘For a lawyer he has a strange concept of justice.’
Galloway continued: ‘Let me once again repeat. I have never benefited from any oil deal and I have never asked anyone to act on my behalf.
‘I have not made a penny out of oil deals with Iraq or indeed any other kind of deal.
‘This ought to be dead, yet Norm Coleman parrots it once more, from 3,000 miles away and protected by privilege.
‘These attacks are being mounted against me as a sideshow to divert attention from the real grand larceny – $1.3bn missing from the defence department and $8.8bn from the oil accounts. All of which occurred under the US administration.’
• Second News story
THREE IRAQI PROVINCES SAY ‘NO’
The Iraqi puppet government’s Independent Electoral Commission yesterday said Iraqis had approved the new ‘constitution’.
Announcing the ‘final results’ of the October 15th referendum, Commission spokesman Farid Ayyar said the new charter had been passed by a simple majority after opponents had failed to achieve the two-thirds majority in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces necessary to bloc ratification.
Earlier in the week, it was announced that the mainly Sunni Saleheddin province had returned an 82 per cent vote against; Anbar province had returned a massive 96 per cent ‘No’ vote; but that Diyala province voted by over 50 per cent for the constitution.
The Electoral Commission announced yesterday that Nineveh province voters had rejected the constitution by 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
With two provinces gaining a two-thirds majority against and one province a simple majority against, the Commission said yesterday the charter had been passed by an overall majority of 78 per cent for, to 21 per cent against.
The turnout was 63 per cent it added.
