US: The Bush administration would stoop to anything to crush critics and opponents of the war in Iraq, left-wing British MP and long-time critic of the Iraqi invasion George Galloway said in Dublin at the weekend.
Commenting on the alleged activities of White House officials against US diplomat Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, who was "outed" as a CIA agent, Mr Galloway said: "This is a further example of the depths of the venality of the people running the American administration and the extent to which they will do anything to crush any opposition."
Mr Galloway himself has been the subject of repeated allegations that he received "kickbacks" from the Saddam Hussein regime through the oil-for-food programme of the United Nations. The allegations were made in separate inquiries under US senator Norm Coleman and, more recently, former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
"They're all from the same sources, and sources who have told Coleman one thing can hardly tell Volcker something different," Mr Galloway said. In this regard, the dissident MP travelled to Paris last Friday to meet lawyers for his friend Tariq Aziz, currently under arrest in Iraq, before flying to Dublin that evening for a Late Late Show appearance. He has speaking engagements this week in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Derry.
A wire service report from Amman at the weekend quoted a Jordanian lawyer for Mr Aziz denying that the former Iraqi deputy prime minister told the Coleman investigation he discussed oil allocations under the oil-for-food programme with Mr Galloway. "These are lies he [ Aziz] denied this," lawyer Badia Aref told Reuters news agency. "It is part of a media campaign aimed at smearing Galloway's reputation," said the lawyer, who saw Mr Aziz on Tuesday last.
Mr Galloway told The Irish Times the Aziz denial was a "very important" development. "If Coleman can manipulate and fabricate the words of such a high-value prisoner as Aziz, what about the lower-level officials who are either in their custody or in their administration and therefore beholden to them [ the US government]?
"And that, at the end of the day, is the only thing that there is. All these inquiries - inquiry after inquiry after inquiry, newspaper, television, everyone, crawling over my life - there is still not a single person put a single penny in my pocket, which is why my denial from the first day still stands. Nobody ever gave me one thin dime out of any business deal in Iraq and there's none of these inquiries have said that they did," he added.
Regarding allegations that money accumulated from oil-for-food trading was paid to his political organisation, the Mariam Appeal, which campaigned against Iraqi sanctions, Mr Galloway said this information had been in the public domain for five years.
"My argument is, needs must. This was a campaign to save the lives of children who were dying like flies," he said. "I think that's more important than where the money came from that funded the campaign to try and stop it."
Asked about claims that businessmen involved in oil-for-food transactions had made payments to his estranged wife Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad, Mr Galloway said: "I didn't actually know that, although I knew that she had been fundraising."
As a professional scientist, she had conducted five years of research in Iraq on the link between depleted uranium weapons and cancer among children:
"As an independent scientist of course she fundraised for her research. It couldn't be done any other way. The World Health Organisation was blocked by the United States from doing it. I wasn't answerable for her when she was my wife, I'm certainly not answerable for her now."