Friday, November 4 2005 11:50 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New York: Refuting External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh's statement, the author of the controversial report into the UN's corrupt oil-for-food programme Paul Volcker has said that all those who were named in the report were notified and given a chance to clarify on the contents about them.

He told reporters yesterday (Nov 03, 2005) that he was not aware of the fact that K Natwar Singh was External Affairs Minister of India.

"I came to know yesterday that Natwar Singh is the Foreign Minister," Volcker said.

The report by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker alleged 1.8 billion dollars in bribes and illegal surcharges were paid to the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

He said everyone who has been named was given a chance to clarify. "We have indicated carefully everybody was notified that they are going to be listed and we also indicated what their response was if any.

"If the response was that of denial we listed it and if the response in a few cases was yes we did it and that was listed. Many got no response, many were in between. If we did it we didn't realise we were doing it. It was a rather common response."

Volcker said 2,500 companies and individuals were listed in the report. According to Iraqi records or other cooperating records, "we may not have them in particular cases, were involved in favoured allocation of oil or goods purchases and paid surcharges or kickbacks. The only evidence in some cases, I don't know about this particular case, is Iraqi records".