NEW DELHI, 8 November 2005 — Indian External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh lost his job yesterday after a UN report claimed he had benefited from the UN’s oil-for-food program for Iraq. However, he will remain in the federal Cabinet. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be in charge of the External Affairs Ministry for now.
The accusation that Natwar was among the thousands of prominent companies and politicians worldwide to illegally benefit from the program has roiled India for days and led to widespread calls that he step down.
Yesterday, the prime minister summoned Natwar for an hour-long meeting at his house and demoted him to minister without portfolio, the prime minister’s office said in a statement. Natwar left the prime minister’s residence without speaking to reporters, waving before getting into his car.
He had initially rejected calls for his resignation, insisting that he received no favors or bribes from Saddam Hussein’s government, or benefited from the $64 billion oil-for-food program.
The independent inquiry, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has accused more than 2,200 companies and prominent politicians worldwide of colluding with Saddam’s regime to bilk the oil-for-food program of $1.8 billion in kickbacks and illicit surcharges. It named Natwar and the ruling Congress party as a “non-contractual beneficiary” in a report released two weeks ago.
The government ordered a judicial investigation into the allegations to be led by former Indian Chief Justice R.S. Pathak. Late Sunday, the government also named an envoy to investigate the credibility of Volcker’s report, indicating that it was not entirely convinced about its veracity. NDTV reported that Natwar will get his portfolio back if Pathak’s investigation clears him.
Soon after his appointment, Pathak told reporters: “My job is to find the truth. It would be an independent probe and there is no timeframe for it. This will be a one man commission to probe into the entire findings of the Volcker report.”
On Sunday evening, the government appointed Virendra Dayal, a former Under Secretary General to the United Nations, to investigate “unverified” references to Indian entities and individuals in the Volcker report. Dayal has been authorized to travel to the United Nations to collect information regarding references made to Indian entities in the report, Sanjaya Baru, media adviser to the prime minister said. Both Dayal and Pathak will work independently, Baru said.
The ruling Congress party has also written a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan requesting him to make available to it all relevant materials and documents on the basis of which references were made against the party in the Volcker report.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which had been demanding Natwar’s scalp since the Volcker report came out, was not happy. Party chief Lal Krishna Advani dismissed the institution of the investigations as a “cover up exercise.”
