Cong legal notice welcome: Volcker

Everyone named in report was notified, given a chance to clarify on contents, says UN panel chief

The head of the inquiry committee looking into the UN's tainted oil-for-food programme, Paul Volcker, has said the Congress was welcome to send a legal notice but maintained that what was said in his report was based on information found in Iraqi records.

"They (Congress) are welcome to send a legal notice. The UN has certain privileges and immunities. And we also in some cases have the analysis, but in some cases we certainly listed the information indicated from Iraqi records," the author of the report into the massive corruption in the UN oil-for-food programme during Saddam Hussein's regime, said in a "mirthful" reaction.

"We did not say what is right or wrong. We only said what was there in the Iraqi records, whether there was denial, acceptance, if there was something in between or no answers."

The Congress yesterday decided to issue a comprehensive legal notice to the UN and the Volcker Committee demanding full disclosure of the material on the basis of which the inquiry committee reached the "unverified conclusion" that the party is a beneficiary in the Iraqi oil deal scam.

Dismissing External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh's claim that he was not asked for his comments, Volcker said those mentioned in the report were notified and given a chance to clarify on the contents about them.

"I came to know yesterday that Natwar Singh is the foreign minister," he said at a function on the issue of reforms of the UN in the context of his report alleging large-scale corruption in the programme.

Volcker said everyone who had been named in the report was given a chance to clarify. "We have indicated carefully everybody was notified that they are going to be listed and we also indicated what their response was if any.

"If the response was that of denial we listed it and if the response in a few cases was yes we did it and that was listed. Many got no response, many were in between. If we did it we did not realise we were doing it. It was a rather common response."

The report mentioned Singh as a "non contractual" beneficiary in the tainted Iraqi oil-for-food programme.

The document by the former Federal Reserve chairman had alleged $1.8 billion in bribes and illegal surcharges were paid to the regime of the former Iraqi President

Volcker said 2,500 companies and individuals were listed in the report. "According to Iraqi records or other cooperating records,.we may not have them in particular cases. Were involved in favoured allocation of oil or goods purchases and paid surcharges or kickbacks. The only evidence in some cases, I do not know about this particular case, is Iraqi records."

Volcker has consistently denied since the release of the report that there was a culture of corruption in the UN, saying he found only limited corruption. He has also declined to blame UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, arguing that it was "systemic problem."