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SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Top leaders of Prime Minister John Howard's government have uniformly denied having any knowledge of Iraqi oil-for-food kickbacks allegedly involving Australia's monopoly wheat exporter.
The latest denial came Tuesday as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told an independent inquiry he had no information on whether the Australian Wheat Board, now known as AWB Ltd., paid a suspected $220 million to Saddam Hussein to secure grain contracts worth more than $2.3 billion between 1997 and 2003 under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program.
Howard also submitted a sworn statement to the inquiry. It was not published, but he was expected to be questioned on it sometime this week, making him the first prime minister to testify at such an inquiry in two decades.
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