Monday, April 17 2006 10:43 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh has told the Enforcement Directorate (ED), probing the allegations of payoffs to Indian entities in Iraq's oil-for-food scam, that signatures on the three letters introducing controversial businessman Andaleeb Sehgal to the Saddam Hussein regime were not his, informed sources said yesterday (Apr 16, 2006).

The ED is understood to have shown Singh the letters purportedly carrying his signatures when he was questioned on February 17 and 18 but he maintained that the signatures were not genuine which the Directorate could get verified by experts, the sources said.

Named along with the Congress party as a non-contractual beneficiary in the oil-for-food scam of 2001 in a report to the UN prepared by a former US official Paul Volcker, Singh had to step down as Minister for External Affairs in November last. The government then announced the setting up an inquiry by former Supreme Court Chief Justice R S Pathak to go into allegations pertaining to the Indian entities.

While denying that the letters had been written by him, Singh had told ED that even if the signatures on these had been his, he saw nothing wrong in such routine notes of introduction, the sources said.