Tuesday, November 1 2005 14:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh today (Nov 1, 2005) rejected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demand that he should resign in the wake of the Volcker committee report naming him as a beneficiary in Iraq's oil for food deals in 2001, saying there was nothing against him.

"I would have offered to resign if there was anything. There was nothing," Singh told reporters at Rashtrapati Bhavan after attending the swearing-in ceremony of Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Questioning the validity of the UN report, Singh said, "Nobody has asked me anything. They (the Committee) sent a man here for a month but no one contacted me".

On the demand for a probe into the allegations against him, Singh shot back "you want a probe, have a probe".

The BJP had demanded that Singh should have resigned immediately after his name was mentioned in the report.

"How can he (Natwar Singh) continue as India's Foreign Minister even for a day if the UN report mentions him as a non-contractual beneficiary for manipulated payment in UN Food-for-Oil programme? Every word he speaks will be suspect and his statements on Foreign Affairs will be suspect," Party spokesman Arun Jaitley had said.

The minister emphatically stated that his son, Jagat Singh, also had nothing to do with this affair.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also virtually rejected the BJP demand on Sunday saying that there was 'insufficient' material to arrive at any adverse conclusion against the External Affairs Minister.