BJP organises protest march against Natwar Singh
New
Delhi: Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party have decided
to take on a protest march on Saturday evening to press for
the resignation of External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh
for his alleged involvement in Oil for Food scam. Senior party
leaders, including Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
and Prakash Javdeker will be leading the protest march from
party's central office to the residence of External Affair's
Minister K Natwar Singh. The BJP has decided to launch a countrywide
protest against the foreign minister and the Congress party
in wake of the revelations made by Volckers committee report,
which has said that "the politicians in several countries
were given oil vouchers that could be sold for a commission
to help Saddam Hussein in his quest to get UN sanctions lifted
and the Congress party and External Affairs Minister Natwar
Singh was one of the politicians who had received favours
from him". The BJP also has asked President APJ Abdul Kalam
to intervene and seek Natwar Singh's resignation from the
Union Cabinet. BJP leaders have decided to approach the President
on Monday to intervene in the matter. Earlier, they had shot
off a letter on Thursday to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,
demanding the immediate removal of Natwar Singh. In its letter,
the BJP had said that the continuation of a person indicted
as a "lobbyist" by a United Nations body as the country's
External Affairs Minister was untenable.
Meanwhile, Natwar Singh, on Saturday dismissed the allegations
and refused to resign. Speaking in an interview to ANI TV,
Singh maintained that the allegations that he and the Congress
party were indirect beneficiaries in the UN "Oil for Food"
contracts, was both outrageous and completely false. Responding
to the BJP's demand to resign as the country's foreign minister,
Singh said that the BJP was not in a position to decide who
the foreign minister of India should be, and added that he
has the full support of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. Natwar also confirmed that India's
Ambassador to the UN, Nirupam Sen, has been asked to seek
clarifications from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the
report. Meanwhile, the Left parties, which provide crucial
outside support to the Congress-led UPA coalition have demanded
a probe into the Volcker Report allegations to clear the air.
The Samajwadi Party also said Natwar Singh had to make his
stand clear on the issue. The Congress had reacting to the
issue, on Thursday said that it was deeply concerned by "unverified
references" made in the report by the UN established Independent
Inquiry Committee, led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker. It said that the party would issue a legal notice
to the United Nations and the Volcker Committee and ask for
evidence to prove the charges.
The oil-for-food programme, which began in 1996 and ended
in 2003, was aimed to ease the impact on Iraqis from the UN
sanctions imposed when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait in
1990. Under the scheme, Iraq was allowed to sell oil to buy
food, medicine and many other goods. The UN report also said
that some 2,200 companies made illicit payments totalling
1.8 billion dollars to Saddam's government under the programme.
Among other politicians, named in the Volcker report, were
British lawmaker George Galloway, former French UN Ambassador
Jean-Bernard Merimee, former French Interior Minister Charles
Pasqua and Russian ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.