THE Oil-for-Food scandal spread to France, a leading critic of the Iraq war, with allegations against a former senior minister (James Bone writes).

The US Senate sub-committee released documents last night suggesting that Charles Pasqua, who served as Interior Minister from 1986 to 1988 and from 1993 to 1995, had been allocated millions of barrels of oil by Saddam Hussein in 1999 and 2000.

“Documents created by the Ministry of Oil during the Hussein regime and interviews of high-ranking Hussein-regime officials conducted by the sub-committee provide substantial evidence that Charles Pasqua was granted oil allocations for 11 million barrels of oil from the Hussein regime under the Oil-for-Food programme in return for his continued support,” the Senate panel said.

The report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations also tracked 5 million barrels of oil allocations allegedly made to Bernard Guillet, M Pasqua’s former foreign policy adviser. The report came just two weeks after M Guillet was taken into custody as part of an investigation of influence-peddling and misappropriation of funds under the Oil-for-Food programme.

M Guillet says that he was helping companies that were having difficulty working in Iraq. M Pasqua, 78, a controversial and powerful figure in French politics, has dismissed claims that he traded in Iraqi oil as ridiculous, and said that he had not worked with M Guillet since 2001. As a member of the French Senate he has immunity for prosecution. “If my name crops up, then someone must have used my name,” he said. “I have nothing to do with all of this.”

The US report, however, cited a handwritten document from Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation (Somo) that it said showed that Saddam had personally approved an allocation to M Pasqua. “In particular, Somo stated that Pasqua’s agent, a man named Bernard Guillet, had declared that Pasqua wanted a Swiss company called Genmar to contract for his allotted oil,” the report said.

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