11-03-2005, 11:34 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Minister's refusal to quit mars India's ruling party By Jo Johnson in New Delhi
Wed Nov 2,12:00 PM ET
India's foreign minister is at risk of becoming a political embarrassment for the Congress-led government following his refusal to resign over allegations that he profited from the Iraqi oil-for-food kickback scam, analysts said on Wednesday.
A UN-backed independent report by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker last week named K. Natwar Singh as a recipient of bribes from Saddam Hussein in a report that has rocked the Indian ruling party.
The furore surrounding Mr Singh's continuation in office is likely to overshadow the new parliamentary session that opens on November 23 and weaken the government's already limited ability to push ahead with reforms.
Mr Singh has so far received only tepid backing from Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, who said there was "insufficient" evidence in the Volcker report to justify any "adverse conclusion" about the minister.
Worryingly for the foreign minister, Congress's communist allies, who provide the government with a majority in parliament, have demanded a "proper investigation" into the charges levelled at the former civil servant.
The Bharatiya Janata Hindu nationalist opposition party (BJP) called again for Mr Singh's resignation yesterday, saying "every word he speaks will be suspect and his statements on foreign affairs will be suspect".
Mr Singh, 74, has dismissed the allegation that he was a "non-contractual beneficiary" as "baseless and untrue" and part of a campaign to malign the Congress party, which was also accused of benefiting financially from the programme.
The foreign minister has promised a detailed statement refuting the charges but has so far restricted himself to saying that the Volcker report into the oil-for-food scandal had as much credibility as US intelligence reports into weapons of mass destruction.
"I am not going to speak through the media. I will make a . . . statement when parliament meets [later this month]," Mr Singh told PTI news agency.
Navtej Sarna, joint secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, on Wednesday refused to comment.
Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst, said: "It's the biggest challenge of Natwar's career. The prime minister's statement is ominous, as is the fact that none of the Congress party's coalition partners has backed him up."
He added: "The pressure will go up, not down, because no government in this country can afford to take on both the Communists and the BJP, and if it becomes damaging to the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi, they can tell him to step aside."
Speculation over who might replace Mr Singh at the foreign ministry has so far focused on Pranab Mukherjee, defence minister and de facto deputy prime minister, P. Chidambaram, finance minister, and Mani Shankar Aiyar, petroleum minister.
Seen as an arch advocate of India's commitment to the non-aligned movement, he Singh pushed hard for a resolution condemning the US invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, when he was in opposition but head of Congress's foreign affairs team.
The Volcker report claimed that Masefield AG, a Swiss company that lifted millions of barrels of oil allocated to Mr Singh and Congress, also had links to Hamdan Export, a company managed by a friend of Jagat Singh, the foreign minister's son.
The report claimed that Iraq selected oil recipients in order to influence foreign policy and international public opinion in its favour. Mr Singh is by far the most senior serving minister from a big democracy allegedly implicated in the scandal<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Financial Times Limited - FT.Com
Wed Nov 2,12:00 PM ET
India's foreign minister is at risk of becoming a political embarrassment for the Congress-led government following his refusal to resign over allegations that he profited from the Iraqi oil-for-food kickback scam, analysts said on Wednesday.
A UN-backed independent report by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker last week named K. Natwar Singh as a recipient of bribes from Saddam Hussein in a report that has rocked the Indian ruling party.
The furore surrounding Mr Singh's continuation in office is likely to overshadow the new parliamentary session that opens on November 23 and weaken the government's already limited ability to push ahead with reforms.
Mr Singh has so far received only tepid backing from Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, who said there was "insufficient" evidence in the Volcker report to justify any "adverse conclusion" about the minister.
Worryingly for the foreign minister, Congress's communist allies, who provide the government with a majority in parliament, have demanded a "proper investigation" into the charges levelled at the former civil servant.
The Bharatiya Janata Hindu nationalist opposition party (BJP) called again for Mr Singh's resignation yesterday, saying "every word he speaks will be suspect and his statements on foreign affairs will be suspect".
Mr Singh, 74, has dismissed the allegation that he was a "non-contractual beneficiary" as "baseless and untrue" and part of a campaign to malign the Congress party, which was also accused of benefiting financially from the programme.
The foreign minister has promised a detailed statement refuting the charges but has so far restricted himself to saying that the Volcker report into the oil-for-food scandal had as much credibility as US intelligence reports into weapons of mass destruction.
"I am not going to speak through the media. I will make a . . . statement when parliament meets [later this month]," Mr Singh told PTI news agency.
Navtej Sarna, joint secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, on Wednesday refused to comment.
Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst, said: "It's the biggest challenge of Natwar's career. The prime minister's statement is ominous, as is the fact that none of the Congress party's coalition partners has backed him up."
He added: "The pressure will go up, not down, because no government in this country can afford to take on both the Communists and the BJP, and if it becomes damaging to the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi, they can tell him to step aside."
Speculation over who might replace Mr Singh at the foreign ministry has so far focused on Pranab Mukherjee, defence minister and de facto deputy prime minister, P. Chidambaram, finance minister, and Mani Shankar Aiyar, petroleum minister.
Seen as an arch advocate of India's commitment to the non-aligned movement, he Singh pushed hard for a resolution condemning the US invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, when he was in opposition but head of Congress's foreign affairs team.
The Volcker report claimed that Masefield AG, a Swiss company that lifted millions of barrels of oil allocated to Mr Singh and Congress, also had links to Hamdan Export, a company managed by a friend of Jagat Singh, the foreign minister's son.
The report claimed that Iraq selected oil recipients in order to influence foreign policy and international public opinion in its favour. Mr Singh is by far the most senior serving minister from a big democracy allegedly implicated in the scandal<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Financial Times Limited - FT.Com