Indian Minister Resigns His Post Amid Charges of Kickbacks 
By Hari Kumar
November 8,2005
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/international/asia/08india.html

NEW DELHI, Nov. 7 - The Indian foreign minister, Natwar Singh, was relieved of his duties Monday, as pressure mounted over allegations that he and the governing Congress Party had collected kickbacks from the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Mr. Singh, 74, a veteran Congress Party politician, is among the most visible proponents of India's ambition to hold a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. He is to remain a cabinet minister without portfolio in the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but he will be stripped of his Foreign Ministry duties, the prime minister's office announced late in the day. 
Earlier on Monday, the prime minister's office appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations against Mr. Singh, to be headed by a former Indian Supreme Court chief justice.
Mr. Singh was cited in a report by a United Nations commission headed by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, which investigated accusations of abuse of the oil-for-food program. The program had allowed Iraq to sell some of its oil to meet civilian needs, despite United Nations sanctions imposed in 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, which barred Iraq from selling oil to other countries. 
The Volcker report found that the former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein had abused the program. In an appendix, the report charged that Mr. Singh and the Congress Party had received as noncontractual beneficiaries eight million barrels of oil.
Mr. Singh has denied wrongdoing. Asked whether he received kickbacks, Mr. Singh declared flatly in a television interview last Saturday, No, no, n-e-v-e-r. As to the Volcker report, he said that its charges were based on information from the present government of Iraq, which has no credibility anywhere.
The opposition leader, Lal Krishna Advani, called for Mr. Singh to be removed from the government altogether. It is embarrassing for the nation, he said.