Euro MP Calls for Probe into Archer Kurdish Funds

LONDON, July 23 (Reuters) - Disgraced British politician and best-selling author Jeffrey
Archer, who has been jailed for lying, faced a demand on Monday for an investigation into
funds he said he raised for Kurdish refugees. 

Archer, who prided himself as a top fund-raiser, announced in 1991 that he and other
charities had raised 57 million pounds for the Kurds who were being driven out of northern
Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War. 

Kurdish groups hailed Archer as their benefactor at the time but later complained that they
had yet to see anything like the sums of money that he said he had raised. 

Emma Nicholson, a former British Conservative Party deputy chairman and now a Liberal
Democrat Member of the European Parliament, said Archer's fundraising activities on behalf
of the Kurds should be investigated. 

"I feel sure that at least some of the worries of the Kurdish peoples of northern Iraq are sadly
all too well founded," Nicholson said. 

"It's time to have a look," she told Sky television news. Archer, also a former deputy
chairman of the Conservative Party, was jailed last Thursday after a jury found him guilty of
perjury at a 1987 libel trial that centred on allegations he had sex with a prostitute. 

Since Archer was jailed, his troubles have multiplied. 

The ruling Labour Party said on Sunday it planned to introduce legislation that would
deprive Archer of his membership of the unelected House of Lords. 

Members of the lower House of Commons are automatically expelled if they are found
guilty of a criminal offence and many politicians and commentators say the Archer case
means the same should apply to the House of Lords. 

Archer, who had sat in the House of Lords for the Conservatives, was expelled from the
party in 1999 when the allegations that led to him being convicted last week first emerged.
He remained in the Lords as an independent. 
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