20 March 2004	Saturday	28 Muharram 1425

LONDON, March 19: A British politician accepted libel damages from an American newspaper on Friday over a story that alleged he took 10 million dollars to support former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

George Galloway, one of Britain's most outspoken anti-war campaigners, sued the Christian Science Monitor over an article headlined "Newly found Iraqi files raise heat on British MP" (member of parliament).

The April 2003 story cited documents given to a journalist by an Iraqi general which purported to show Galloway had received payments in return for his "courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq".

Mr Galloway's lawyer Mark Bateman accepted a formal apology during a brief hearing at the High Court in London on Friday. "The allegations... that (he) opposed the U.N.-imposed sanctions on Iraq and, thereafter, the recent conflict in Iraq, because he had been paid by the Iraqi regime, are false and without foundation," Bateman told the court.

He said the Monitor, which is available to readers in Britain on the Internet, now accepted there was no truth in the allegations and had paid the MP substantial, undisclosed damages.

Galloway was expelled from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's ruling Labour Party last October after branding Blair and US President George W. Bush "wolves".

The daily newspaper, founded in 1908, is owned and published by the First Church of Christ, Scientist, based in Boston, Massachusetts. The church said it "deeply regretted" publishing the article.

"The Christian Science Monitor published the article based on documents which it believed were genuine, but which it now accepts were forgeries," the publisher's lawyer Julia Schoepflin, told the court. -Reuters