From the ABC

Howard turned a blind eye to UN breaches: Rudd
The Federal Opposition is using a summary of secret documents released by the Cole inquiry to attack the Government over the Iraqi wheat scandal.

The summarised, unassessed intelligence reports spanning six years from 1998 show Australian spy agencies received information indicating that trucking company Alia was involved in breaching United Nations (UN) sanctions on behalf of the Iraqi regime.

The summary says the intelligence did not name AWB and suggested Australian wheat imports did not pay Iraqi surcharges.

But Labor's Kevin Rudd says there were already wheat kickback warnings from the UN and the Government should have made a connection.

"[Prime Minister] John Howard's defence is he failed to join the dots, it's not believable," he said.

Mr Rudd says the Prime Minister turned a blind eye.

"Here we have six separate intelligence community warnings about what the oil-for-food program was being subjected to by Saddam Hussein, and at the same time the Howard Government is receiving specific warnings from the United Nations that the AWB was into this up to its eyeballs and John Howard turned a blind eye," he said.

He says it is unbelievable the Prime Minister had not been told what was in the intelligence.

"I think the key thing ... is that these documents today demonstrate that we have an Australian Prime Minister who is a liar," he said.

From the ABC
Oil-for-food documents 'didn't warrant sanctions probe'
Australia's intelligence clearing house, the Office of National Assessment (ONA), says information it received about breaches of sanctions on Iraq were not enough to trigger a larger investigation.

ONA suggests that the material was buried in reports distributed within the Australian Government.

Brendon Hammer, the deputy director-general of ONA, says between 1998 and 2004, 15 out of 750,000 unassessed intelligence reports had material on the corruption of the oil-for-food contract.

However only two reports referred to staple foods and none mentioned AWB, which was at the time sending millions of dollars to Iraq through wheat contracts.

The material from foreign spy agencies detail Alia Trucking's role in collecting fees for Iraq, and talk about the imposition of a 10 per cent service fee by Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Editor,
Sydney Morning Herald.                                                 March 17, 2006.
 

Alexander Downer’s attempt to defend his government’s
dismissal of intelligence reports, detailing AWB rorting of the UN oil-for-food
program, because they were from “foreign sources” & weren’t “Australian
intelligence”, is truly pathetic (‘Assessment ‘wasn’t a major problem’, Herald,
March 17).

Would he have us forget that,
only three short years ago, his government cited “foreign sources” of
intelligence as proof of the existence of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, dismissing the
contrary view of “Australian intelligence” & using those same “foreign
sources” as justification for our involvement in an illegal war of aggression
against another sovereign nation? 

It’s our intelligence that’s
being insulted.