Cheney Vents F-fury at Senator

Vice president Dick Cheney brought a long-running feud with leading Democrats over his former company, Halliburton, to a foul-mouthed climax on the floor of the Senate, it emerged yesterday.

Mr Cheney told Vermont's senator, Patrick Leahy to "f**k yourself", after he apparently approached George Bush's number two for a chat.

The vice president was furious about the Democrat's criticism of Halliburton and its close relationship to the Bush administration.

The Texas company has won billions of dollars in contracts in the US "war on terror", doing everything from building the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay to reconstructing Iraq's southern oil fields.

The Iraq oil contract alone was worth $1.2bn (£650m) and it was initially awarded to Halliburton without competitive bidding, provoking outrage from critics including Senator Leahy, who have pointed to documentation suggesting that Mr Cheney, Halliburton's former chief executive, was consulted before the contract was awarded.

The issue came to the boil on Tuesday, when the senate posed with Mr Cheney for a group photograph.

"Senator Leahy had come up to him to chat after the official photo. He approached him with a friendly comment," a Democratic party official who saw the incident told the Guardian. "The vice president immediately launched into a diatribe about the criticism of Senator Leahy and others of Halliburton and its sole source contracts."

According to the official, Mr Leahy counter-attacked, drawing the obscenity from Mr Cheney.

The vice president's office has not denied the exchange. A spokesman said there was "a frank exchange of views."