Keith Vaz breaks silence, hits out at media

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 27. With pressure mounting on him to disclose the full extent of his connection with the Hindujas' passport affair and even as it emerged that almost every prominent Minister met the Hindujas at one time or the other, the Foreign Office Minister, Mr. Keith Vaz, hit back alleging a touch of racism in the way the issue was being pursued especially in the media. ``I don't like this underlying hint of `should an Indian get a passport?'' he retorted on Friday claiming that he was proud of his links with the Hindujas and the Asian community.

His remarks came as the Government released names of its Ministers and civil servants who have had contacts with the Hindujas - and the list reads like Whitehall's who's who including the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Robin Cook, his erstwhile colleague and now Energy Minister, Mr. Peter Hain, the Trade and Industry Secretary, Mr. Stephen Byers, and his colleague, Ms. Patricia Hewitt. It is understood that Whitehall has been told to come clean on its contacts with the Hindujas to avoid any more controversies ahead of the general elections.

Mr. Vaz, MP from the predominantly-Asian city of Leicester, is the Labour's most visible ethnic face and there was some concern over what seemed liked an attempt by him to turn a corruption scandal into a race issue. There was a view that he played just a shade too much on his Asian background, with a hint that both he and the Hindujas were being pursued because of the colour of their skin. His reference to the fact that a White South African athlete, Zola Budd, was given a British passport on a fast-track basis without raising any eyebrows did not go unnoticed. ``No one could lose the inference - Ms. Budd of course was a white South African brought over to this country by the Daily Mail ,one of the newspapers most in pursuit of Mr. Vaz,'' commented The Independent.

Mr. Vaz, who had been avoiding the media for the past two days, broke his silence yesterday and though he did not give a direct reply to any of the nagging questions he was combative and appeared remarkably confident of coming out squeaky clean from the inquiry the Prime Minister has ordered. ``A lot of you will look very foolish when facts come out,'' he said accusing the media at one point of having written a lot of ``garbage'' about Mr. Mandelson, who was forced to resign early this week for lying about his role in influencing Mr. Srichand Hinduja's application for citizenship.

Mr. Vaz, who was accosted by mediapersons outside the Indian High Commission after a function, had only one explanation for his close links with Hindujas and his role in the passport case: As a prominent Asian politician he was obliged to take up the cases of the Asian community - a line taken by the Prime Minister as well to defend Mr. Vaz.

``I take on cases on behalf of a lot of members of the Asian community. When I came to this country I was nine years old. My first experience of dealing with an MP was to do with a race issue and he was not prepared to take it on,'' he said. He denied that he ever spoke to the Prime Minister about Mr. Srichand Hinduja's passport, but declined to answer if he had written to him or Mr. Mandelson.

Sir Anthony Hammond, QC, was looking into all the aspect and once the inquiry was over he would be delighted to let the media publish all his letters. The passport row has hit Mr. Vaz when a parliamentary standards committee is looking into allegations relating to his dealings with Asian businessmen, but the committee is reported to have cleared him of most other charges.

The Opposition meanwhile, accused the Prime Minister of prejudging the Hammond inquiry into the passport affair with his statement that ``from the look of the papers I have seen I cannot see anything wrong with what has been done.'' A Tory spokesman said this showed that the inquiry could be a ``whitewash'' job. ``As always, Mr. Tony Blair wants it both ways. He's allowed to prejudge the inquiry but no one else is allowed to ask or scrutinise anything in Parliament (on the plea that an inquiry is on),'' said Mr. John Redwood.

An official spokesman however maintained that there was no question of hiding anything and the inquiry would address all the issues raised by the affair.

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