Sonia says no to KGB, yes to Volcker

New Delhi: Congress President Sonia Gandhi came down heavily on the NDA for disrupting the Parliament proceedings for the second consecutive day on Friday.

She outrightly rejected the Opposition?s demand for a Parliament debate on the Mitokhin disclosure that the Soviet intelligence agency KGB had funded the Congress during the Cold War.

"As far as the so-called Mitrokhin disclosures are concerned, we reject them outright," Gandhi said

Congress sources reveal the party does not give any importance to Mitrokhin Archives disclosures as "they are in the character of a fiction".

However, she expressed a willingness to discuss the Volcker Committee Report on Iraq's oil-for-food programme.

"I have emphatically stated that there is just no question of the involvement of the Congress in Iraq's oil-for-food programme," she said, while speaking at the General Body Meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP), attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party MPs.

"Government has already set up an Inquiry Authority headed by a former Chief Justice and a judge of the International Court of Justice on the Volcker issue", she said.

"The government has also expressed its readiness for a debate but the NDA is simply not interested," she added. "We will not hesitate to take action, if the probe findings so warrant, against anyone who may have misused the party's name for personal gain," she added.

The Opposition has been disrupting both the Houses of Parliament, demanding resignation of former external affairs minister Natwar Singh from the Cabinet as his name has figured in the list of 'non-contractual beneficiaries' in the oil deal scam.

It is also demanding Ms Gandhi's resignation as the Congress Party has also been named as a beneficiary in Iraq's Oil-for-Food scam under the Saddam Hussein regime in 2001.

About the BJP's allegation that the Congress had betrayed the interests of the country, Sonia Gandhi said that the Congress needed no lessons on patriotism.

On the Iran nuclear issue, the Congress President said the government will continue to work for a just and fair solution.