Not sure how it will pan out. So far Nutwar seems to be knee-deep in Saddam’s scandal. I guess petro-dollars were too valuable for the Bharatis.
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20051204095924&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0
Manmohan Singh not averse to Natwar Singh’s resignation
Monday December 5 2005 00:00 IST
IANS
MOSCOW: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday did not rule out accepting disgraced minister K. Natwar Singh’s resignation from the cabinet if he did so voluntarily, saying he had not made up his mind yet on whom to give the external affairs portfolio.
“When a person takes a decision voluntarily, when that situation arises, we will consider what to do,” the prime minister told the media delegation accompanying him on the way here for the annual India-Russia summit.
Following strict instructions to the media that he would field no more than three questions on the fall-out of the Paul Volcker report into alleged irregularities in Iraq’s oil-for-food programme, the prime minister also spoke about his 40-minute meeting with Natwar Singh on Saturday.
“He (Natwar Singh) is a colleague of mine. He came to see me. We discussed various issues that have been happening during the past few weeks,” Manmohan Singh said.
“There is nothing more significant to that.”
The prime minister also categorically said that he and Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not have divergent views on how to deal with the fallout of the Volcker report on Natwar Singh.
“We have no differences.”
Saturday’s meeting between Natwar Singh and the prime minister came in the backdrop of an interview India’s former envoy to Croatia Aniel Matherani gave to a magazine, in which he charged that Natwar Singh had benefited from oil vouchers given by the erstwhile Saddam Hussein regime.
Matherani - who subsequently said his remarks were made in an off-the-record conversation - has since been recalled from Zagreb.
The UN-appointed Paul Volcker committee’s report had named the Congress party and Natwar Singh, who had to resign as external affairs minister, as non-contractual beneficiaries in the oil-for-food programme. Natwar Singh is now a minister without portfolio.
Manmohan Singh also said the opposition’s charges on the Volcker report were weak and added that he did not attach too much importance to the matter.
“The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) itself knows that it has no substance in what they are saying,” Manmohan Singh said on board the special Air India One aircraft.
“I don’t attach too much importance to that.”