Released documents may implicate French, Russian officials in oil-for-food scandal News
Released documents may implicate French, Russian officials in oil-for-food scandal

[JURIST] A subcommittee of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce [official website] has released new documents that could implicate French and Russian officials [press release] in the scandal involving the UN Oil-for-Food [official website] program. The documents suggest that in 2002 the Iraqi intelligence service, in an attempt to garner support from other countries, composed a list of French and Russian officials who could possibly be influenced by oil bribes. The documents do not contain much information on who was actually contacted, or what agreements were made between Saddam and the officials. One official named in the documents, French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua [official website, in French], was identified Thursday [JURIST report] by the investigations subcommittee [official website] of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee [official website], one of four other congressional committees investigating the oil-for-food scandal, as having receiving "allocations" of 11 million barrels of oil. The Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has scheduled a hearing for Monday. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.