Allies dismiss reports of Saddam payoffs

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NEW YORK -- French, Russian and U.N. officials warned against making hasty judgments yesterday after the U.S. Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had used the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy influence at the United Nations.

The report accused key officials -- including former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and retired U.N. oil-for-food director Benon Sevan -- of accepting oil vouchers, which could be exchanged secretly for cash.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard yesterday noted that Mr. Sevan had denied the charges, and he urged patience until a U.N.-appointed panel, led by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, issues its own report.

The accusations "are a relatively minor part of this report yesterday, which focused primarily on weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Eckhard told reporters.

"We have nothing new to say. That matter is clearly in the hands of Paul Volcker. We are cooperating with him."

The U.S. report, which was posted on the CIA Web site (www.cia.gov), generated a flurry of angry denials.

"I never took a drop [of oil] or a single dollar from Iraq or from any other country. I have never dealt with oil," the Interfax news agency quoted Mr. Zhirinovsky as saying.

The nationalist Russian politician was a frequent visitor to Saddam's Iraq.

In Jakarta, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry dismissed the accusations as "far-fetched."

Some of the gravest accusations in the report by the U.S. Iraq Survey Group (ISG) are against senior French officials, including charges that they accepted payoffs to counterbalance U.S. power inside the sanctions committee on the U.N. Security Council.