politics today and further fraud...

A group of Liberal backbenchers has told the Prime Minister that sending AWB chairman Brendan Stewart on a government delegation to Iraq is like waving a red flag at a bull.

The seven member group met with John Howard last week to voice concern that the trip will further jeopardise relations with Iraq and damage other trade to the region.

Mr Howard says AWB must travel on the delegation to win back wheat sales in Iraq because it owns the export wheat pool.

Seven rural Liberals told Mr Howard that AWB should travel separately or not at all.

"We were terribly concerned about that. We were also terribly concerned that there didn't appear to be any genuine grower representation," NSW Liberal Alby Schultz said.

Mr Schultz says the group's objection to AWB's veto over wheat exports was also raised at the meeting.

Nationals MP John Forrest has called for opponents of the single desk and National Party haters to shut-up and listen to what the majority of growers are saying.

"People should keep their heads and start thinking in the interests of growers," he said.

Mr Forrest is still hopeful the delegation might not be necessary and a diplomatic solution can be found before it leaves.

A recent poll of wheat growers shows overwhelming support for keeping the single desk, although many farmers believe AWB's public reputation has been badly damaged.

Meanwhile the oil-for-food inquiry has been shown a contract between AWB and a US-based grain trader that discloses a $US15 US per tonne trucking fee paid as a kickback to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The April 2000 contract with Minneapolis-based Commodity Specialist Company was shown to new witness, AWB executive Daryl Borlase.

Senior counsel assisting John Agius asked Mr Borlase why the contract for 100,000 tonnes of Australian wheat explicitly recorded the trucking fee to the American intermediary but the contract that went to the UN did not.

Instead, the UN contract showed an inflated price of $US6 per metric tonne.

Mr Borlase said he could not say why that was the case.

ABC Online