Natwar is an embarrassment

I wonder what fig-leaf of defence Natwar Singh would offer after the Volcker report. I would agree with Swapan Dasgupta that the former Federal Reserve chairman did not have an axe to grind in Natwar Singh when he named the foreign minister in the beneficiary list of Saddam's oil-for-food scandal. What's really interesting is that senior Congress leaders have rubbished the charges against the party, but not those against Natwar. Is it an indirect admission of guilt that Natwar is indeed the rotten one? The foreign minister has surely a lot to answer. Writing in Pioneer, Swapan Dasgupta convincingly argues that the Gandhi family loyalist is indeed a spot of bother.



Swapan Dasgupta


First there was The Mitrokhin Archive, a quasi-official publication of the British Government which revealed the alarming extent of KGB penetration of the Left-liberal political establishment and India's intelligence agencies.


The UPA Government, no doubt concerned with the reputation of the Congress party and its Communist allies, decided to brazen out the controversy. A junior Minister of State was deputed to inform the country that the charges were "devoid of merit" and smacked of unsubstantiated sensationalism. A lazy media decided this was the last word on the subject and relegated Mitrokhin to the archives.


Now there is another damning report that suggests that a senior member of the Congress party was bribed by Saddam Hussein to influence the country's foreign policy. The UN-backed, independent report by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker on the Oil for Food scandal, which was released in New York on Friday, is only tangentially about India. Indeed, India finds only perfunctory mention in the main report. It is a report on how the Saddam regime received colossal kickbacks and bribed its way through the political establishments around the world.


Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered if the Indian extras in this web of deceit were figures from the past. However, the Congress establishment has to face up to the fact that an international report by a man, who has absolutely no axe to grind in India, has listed External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh as a beneficiary of $748,450 (amounting to Rs 3.37 crore at today's exchange rate) from Iraqi oil sales. The money was routed through Switzerland by a company called Masefield AG and listed the beneficiary as a "member of the Congress party."


The political tag attached to the payment makes it quite apparent that the External Affairs Minister was paid in his then capacity as head of the Congress' foreign affairs cell. According to the Volcker Report, such payments were made to "empower Iraq with economic and political leverage to advance its broader interest in overturning the sanctions regime." In other words, Saddam's payments were qualitatively no different from the suitcases disbursed by the KGB to further the interests of the Soviet Union. Saddam was buying influence and the Congress allowed itself to be bought.


This, however, is not an ordinary allegation of sleaze. The amount involved is relatively small compared to whispered kickbacks in commercial deals. The Volcker Report acquires importance on two counts. First, there is the role of Natwar Singh in pushing the unanimous resolution condemning the US-led military intervention in Iraq in 2003. And, second, Natwar Singh now happens to be the External Affairs Minister of India.


For the moment, it is not necessary to go over Natwar Singh's successful lobbying for Saddam in India. Nor should the controversy be confined to the repeated visits made to Saddam's Iraq by a Congress MLA who is part of Natwar Singh's family. What is important today is the issue of the Minister continuing in office for even a single day. A man who has been indicted by an international report for being a lobbyist for a criminal regime has absolutely no right to determine the foreign policy of India. His immediate resignation is a must.


Of course, the Minister has every right to answer the charges. However, the indictment by the Volcker Report means that it has to be resignation first, and a post-mortem subsequently. National honour and national security must be upheld. Both Mitrokhin and Volcker have conclusively demonstrated that "anti-imperialism" is not an ideology; it is a position of profit.


For the Congress too there are important questions to answer. Natwar Singh is not an ordinary functionary of the party. He has for long been a trusted adviser of Sonia Gandhi and has also served as the custodian for various trusts of the first family. He is in the inside track of decision-making in the Congress. Consequently, it is pertinent to ask the question: Were the payoffs merely to an individual?