Friday, August 4 2006 17:02 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Former Indian ambassador to Croatia Aneil Mathrani today(Aug 4, 2008) said he was happy that the campaign against him was 'finally over' following the clean chit given to him by Justice R.S. Pathak, the one-man panel probing suspected Indian links in Iraq's oil-for-food corruption scandal.

"I can breathe now. I have been unfairly targeted all these months. It is finally over now and I need to move along," Mathrani told sources from his residence in south Delhi.

The Justice Pathak Inquiry Authority, in its report submitted to the prime minister Thursday, indicted former external affairs minister K. Natwar Singh for abusing his position in procuring contracts in Iraq's oil-for-food scam that was uncovered by the UN while giving a clean chit to the ruling Congress party.

Mathrani was part of the official Congress delegation that visited Baghdad in January 2001.

A former protégé of Singh, Mathrani shot into the limelight after he reportedly gave an interview to India Today in December last year accusing the former external affairs minister of misusing the Congress party's name to illegally benefit from Iraq's oil-for food transactions.

Apart from Natwar Singh, who headed the delegation, the other members included P. Shiv Shankar, a former central minister, and A.R. Antulay, currently minority affairs minister.

Mathrani, who had earlier served in the foreign affairs cell of the party, said he had no material evidence to suggest that Singh had actually collected oil coupons from the then Iraqi regime, but said it was "surprising" to see both Jagat Singh and his business partner Andaleep Sehgal first in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and then in Baghdad.

"This is what I told the Pathak panel and repeated the same to Enforcement Directorate officials," said Matherani.

What he further told the panel was that all the members of the Congress delegation were put up at the 18-storey Al-Rashid hotel in Baghdad owned by the then ruling Baath party during their trip in January 2001.

"Only official delegates could stay in that hotel. The fact that both Jagat and Sehgal also stayed in the same hotel, as the rest of the members, is enough indication that they were presumed to be part of the official delegation," said Mathrani.

"Many in the media pointed a suspicious finger at me, accusing of me of playing out a bigger role. I have been vindicated," he said.

Besides being part of the Congress delegation to Iraq, Mathrani also hit the headlines for his supposed peccadilloes during his yearlong stay in Croatia till 2005.

"I don't want to say anything about those reports. I keep telling everyone that I have a letter from the foreign office in Croatia of my good conduct there. These rumours that are doing the rounds are baseless," he said.

After virtually leading a life of a recluse for the last eight months, Mathrani - who also worked with Rajiv Gandhi, now plans to stage a comeback.

"Let's see how it goes. I need to bounce back," he said.