NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday demanded the immediate resignation of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh after the disclosures in the Volcker Committee report listed him among the "non-contractual beneficiaries" of Iraqi oil sales in 2001 related to the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal.

Party general secretary Arun Jaitley said: "Mr. Singh must go immediately. He cannot be allowed to continue even for a day as India's External Affairs Minister when he has been named a beneficiary for working as a lobbyist for Iraq." Mr. Jaitley referred to the lead story carried by the October 29 edition of The Hindu and said the Government, the Congress and Mr. Singh should come out with a candid statement on this entire affair. "Payments were made to lobbyists for opposing economic sanctions imposed on Iraq at the time. The lobbyists were trying to manage the political and diplomatic environment in their countries (in favour of Iraq)," Mr. Jaitley said.

He said the issue was one of "deep concern" as an independent inquiry appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General had come out with its report, now available on the Internet. "This is not like the allegation in the Mitrokhin archives", he said, referring to the book in which allegations of payoffs to the Congress by the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, were made. "The Volcker report, was the result of inquiry and investigation, not based on stolen papers," Mr. Jaitley said "and the Congress cannot reject this report".

Releasing three pages of the report, he said that while Mr. Singh has been mentioned as a "beneficiary" of oil sold by Iraq through Masefield AG, the Congress also figured in the list of beneficiaries.

"The Congress party is like a leopard that never changes its spots ... the Congress remains the same in or out of power," he said. Referring to the Congress party's denial of any wrong doing, he said this would not help as the "whole world" has seen the report and it will be a subject of discussion for days and months to come. Anything that Mr. Singh says will now be suspect, he said. The Government should set in motion its political and administrative machinery to "find the truth."

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