Natwar Singh to resign over oil-for-food scam

NEW DELHI, Tuesday (AFP) Former Indian foreign minister Natwar Singh, facing opposition fury over charges that he and the ruling Congress party skimmed the UN oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, is to resign, a party spokesman said Tuesday.

Singh was removed from the foreign ministry last month when a UN report named him in the scam, but he remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

Singh met Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi late Monday and told her he was resigning from the cabinet to save the party and government from further embarrassment, party spokesman Anand Sharma said.

Lawmakers from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had blocked proceedings in parliament over demands for Singh's head.

The opposition bayed for blood from Friday after fresh disclosures by India's ambassador to Croatia, also a Congress insider, that the Iraqis had rewarded Singh with an oil allotment for his "personal service."

He led a four-member team to Iraq in 2001 that included the envoy, Anil Matherani, who was recalled to Delhi at the weekend.

In October, former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker issued a UN report saying ousted president Saddam Hussein's regime manipulated the oil-for-food programme to extract about 1.8 billion dollars in surcharges and bribes.

Volcker named Singh as a beneficiary of four million barrels of Iraqi oil. Congress, India's oldest political party, was also listed as a beneficiary of a separate allotment of four million barrels.

Congress spokesman Sharma said Singh had told Gandhi Tuesday that he had spoken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is on a visit to Russia, by telephone.

The former foreign minister told Gandhi he would hand over his resignation on the premier's return to India on Wednesday, Sharma said.

The resignation came a day after he was unceremoniously removed from the Congress Steering Committee, the top decision making body of the Congress, at a meeting chaired by Gandhi.

Natwar Singh's exit from the coveted party post followed public statements by a number of senior Congress leaders advising him to quit the cabinet and ease the pressure on the government.

"Singh's removal from the Congress Committee was a hint that he quit the cabinet also," said Rasheed Kidwai, political analyst and biographer of Sonia Gandhi.

Natwar Singh, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, had repeatedly refused to resign from his cabinet post.

"I am not guilty of any wrong-doing in law or spirit. I refuse to sacrifice myself," he told the Press Trust of India news agency on Sunday.

Kidwai and other analysts said the resignation offered a temporary reprieve for the Congress. "This is a temporary damage limitation exercise, the opposition is unlikely to let go of the issue easily," Kidwai warned.

Neerja Chowdhury, political analyst with the Indian Express newspaper agreed. "The opposition upped the ante last week in parliament," she said. "Natwar's removal could take some of the sting out of the opposition campaign. But they will keep gunning for the Congress party and Sonia," she added.

Meanwhile, an Indian finance ministry team, which probes irregularities, has left for Iraq to probe Natwar Singh's visit there in January 2001.

The government has named a retired supreme court judge to head investigations into the Volcker report.