External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh on Monday refused to make any further comments on the controversial UN report, which mentioned him as a beneficiary in oil deals in the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq but strongly questioned the validity of the report.
"The report has as much validity as the report by the CIA director about the alleged existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq," he said referring to the report by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
"We have it from no less an authority than Colin Powell who publicly stated that he was given false information on WMDs which he conveyed to the UN Security Council as the US secretary of state," Singh told PTI in New Delhi.
Standing by him, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had, on Sunday, said that there was "insufficient" material to arrive at any adverse conclusion against the external affairs minister.
The PMO statement came even as the United Progressive Alliance's Left allies seeking a probe into the Volcker Committee report that named Natwar and the Congress party as non-contractual beneficiaries in the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq in 2001.
Nawtar had expressed his outrage at what he termed as "baseless and untrue" allegations in the report and dubbed it as part of the campaign to malign the Congress party and its senior leaders.
"My record in public life for the past 50 years and more has been an open book. My personal integrity has never been questioned," he had said on Saturday from Frankfurt on learning about the report in The Hindu daily, which quoted from the UN report.
During his meeting with the prime minister, Natwar categorically denied any involvement in the alleged illicit payments on oil transactions under the programme as stated in the report.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United) have been pressing for his resignation, saying that Natwar cannot stay even for a minute in his post after the findings in the UN report.
