A BRITISH MP will make an unprecedented appearance on Capitol Hill this morning to confront a panel of US senators who have accused him of being in the pay of Saddam Hussein.

George Galloway and the 13 senators are expected to trade angry charges when they come face to face in a televised clash that pits a man accused of being an apologist for Saddam with some of the former Iraqi dictator’s fiercest critics.

Last week the seven Republicans and six Democrats on the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations claimed to have uncovered “significant evidence” that Mr Galloway was allocated millions of barrels of oil by Saddam’s regime as it systematically abused the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme.

But Mr Galloway, the former Labour MP who won an upset victory as an antiwar Respect Party candidate in the general election, was in fighting form yesterday as he prepared to board an aircraft at Heathrow.

“I am going to accuse them of being involved in a huge diversion from the real issues in Iraq, which are the theft of billions of dollars worth of Iraq’s wealth by the United States of America and its corporations, and the deaths of more than 100,000 people in Iraq, the destruction of the country, the opening of the doors to Islamic extremism of the al-Qaeda variety, tremendous crimes they have committed in Iraq,” he said.

When he arrived in Washington, he added: “I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neocon George Bush who is pro-war. I come not as the accused but as the accuser.”

Asked whether he had prepared a statement to present at the hearing, the MP said he had formulated some thoughts but would not reveal them.

The senators are in no mood to be lectured by a man they consider a friend of Saddam. All experienced television performers themselves, they have been briefed on his often belligerent style. At the weekend, they formally notified him that he would be required to testify under oath. A committee spokesman noted pointedly that the penalty for lying to Congress is five years’ imprisonment.

A detailed report, prepared by both Republican and Democratic staffers, concluded last week that Mr Galloway had received 20 million barrels of “oil allocations” from Iraq under Saddam. The committee’s investigators said Mr Galloway may have used the Mariam Appeal, originally established to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl to have leukaemia treatment in Glasgow, “to conceal payments”.

Norm Coleman, the Republican senator from Minnesota who chairs the panel, said: “I’m not going to debate George Galloway. The evidence speaks for itself. It is what it is, unless he has some explanation. I will be interested in his explanation of why his name is listed on all these Iraqi documents.

“I do not know what Galloway can add, other than what he has already added, which is a denial,” he said.

The senators are expected to question Mr Galloway about his relationship with Fawaz Zureikat, a pro-Saddam businessman in Jordan who did business with Iraq under the UN Oil-for-Food programme and was a main funder of the MP’s anti-sanctions campaign.

The senators are confident that their evidence, from Iraqi documents recovered after the war as well as recent interviews with Saddam’s lieutenants, including Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Vice-President, will stand up in the confrontation with Mr Galloway.

Mr Galloway’s appearance is the outcome of a row between the Senate panel and the maverick MP. When Senate investigators released their report on Mr Galloway’s alleged oil dealings last week, he said that they had ignored his offer to testify. Committee staff insisted he had not contacted them “by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon” and invited him to appear.

In a further sign that the hearing will be heated, Democrats on the Senate panel released a report last night accusing the US Government of failing to stop American companies from paying illegal oil surcharges to Iraq under Saddam, in violation of the Oil-for-Food programme.

The Democrats, led by Carl Levin, said that 52 per cent of the $228 million in illegal surcharges paid to Iraq during 2000-02 was from US companies, with about a third allegedly from Bayoil, a Texas oil company that has been indicted for its dealings with Saddam.

The report said that the US had abdicated its responsibilities and pushed the burden of monitoring compliance on to the UN. It added that the US Government took “virtually no steps” to stop the payment of the surcharges.

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