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Natwar Singh rejects reports of division in Congress

     New Delhi: External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh has rejected a newspaper report that alleged that three senior Congress leaders - Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, AICC general secretary Ambika Soni and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh - were gunning to get him out of the cabinet. The paper had quoted him as saying that there were divisions within the party and that Ambika Soni, Pranab Mukherjee and Jairam Ramesh were putting pressure on the party to remove him as the country's Foreign Minister. Singh described all three leaders as his esteemed colleagues and described the newspaper report as" far- fetched and untrue."

     Meanwhile, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has launched a series of protests demanding Natwar Singh's resignation in wake of the Volcker Committee report, which said that the Congress party and the External Affairs Minister were indirect beneficiaries in the Oil for Food scam. BJP leaders are likely to meet President APJ Abdul Kalam over the matter. The Volcker Committee report has said that 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 ruling Congress party and External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh received favours from him. The oil-for-food programme, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed to ease the pressure on Iraq 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 benefited through 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.

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