The Hindu : A friend in need?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 25, 2002

International

International

A friend in need?

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, FEB. 24. Is the newly controversial Indian industrialist, Lakshmi Mittal a "friend" of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair or simply another face in the crowd of generous donors to the Labour Party?

If Mr. Blair did not known him personally, as Downing Street has consistently claimed in the wake of the "Mittalgate" (aka "Garbagegate"), why was Mr. Mittal referred to as a "friend" in the original draft of the Prime Minister's now famous letter to the Romanian Government on the businessman's behalf? And who, in Downing Street, removed the word before putting up the letter for Mr. Blair's signatures?

To a lay observer, this might sound like splitting one hair too many but sleaze-busters in the British media say the affair stinks, and smells of a "cover up". On Sunday, they had a retired senior civil servant suggest that Downing Street had a hand in extracting a recommendation from the British Ambassador in Bucharest that a letter in support of Mr. Mittal's bid to purchase Romania's steel plant Sidex would be a good idea. This, they said, contradicted the Government's claim that Mr. Blair simply acted on the Ambassador's advice that it was in the country's national interest to help a "British" company clinch the Sidex deal.

The latest twist comes amid strong official denial that Mr. Blair's intervention had anything to do with Mr. Mittal's £1,25,000 donation to the Labour's election fund last year. Mr. Blair says he was not aware of the donation when he wrote to his Romanian counterpart — barely weeks after the donation — backing the bid by Mr. Mittal's LNM Holdings to buy Sidex. How come then Mr. Mittal came to be described as a "friend", critics were asking today.

According to a former Permanent Secretary, Richard Packer, the trail, in all probability, leads to Downing Street. "The Ambassador in Romania is in no position to know whether an obscure if rich gentleman is a friend of the Prime Minister. It is obvious that he would have only drafted a letter which would involve the P.M. referring to Mittal in such terms if he had been reliably informed that the two at least knew each other and the relationship was cordial...The more the matter is looked at from all angles, the more it is apparent that the original source of information about the relationship between Blair and Mittal must have been Downing Street itself," he wrote in article reproduced in The Sunday Telegraph from a website.

It is all conjecture and deduction but enough to fuel the row over the Blair Government's links with big business. In another development, meanwhile, the Opposition in Romania has attacked the sale of Sidex to Mr. Mittal's company saying it has been sold for peanuts

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