Britain on Friday rejected an accusation by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that Britain and the United States ignored illegal oil smuggling from Iraq to Jordan and Turkey in the 1990s.

"I regret to say that suggestions that the United Kingdom ignored smuggling of oil from Iraq to Jordan and Turkey are inaccurate, and at variance with the record of successive British governments from the end of the Gulf War," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement.

Britain was consistently in the lead in seeking to enforce sanctions against Iraq, Straw said. In May 2001, Britain proposed measures in a draft UN Security Council resolution "seeking to clamp down on smuggling through providing lawful supplies of Iraqi oil to Jordan and Turkey, but this resolution was opposed," Straw added.

The foreign secretary also mentioned that there was an ambiguous approach by certain members of the Security Council to the Saddam regime, but "the UK was not one of these members – far from it."

Annan Thursday accused the United States and Britain of allowing Saddam Hussein to illegally export oil to Jordan and Turkey to make money outside the UN's oil-for-food program. Only the US and Britain had forces that could have stopped it at that time, Annan said, but they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies."

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2005)