Blix Says; Blair Made WMD Mistake

The claim appeared in a dossier presented to Parliament last September as the government set out its first justifications for eventual military action in Iraq.
Last Monday, a cross-party committee of MPs found that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it" although it cleared Mr Blair’s media chief Alastair Campbell of inserting it in the dossier.

Uranium Split

And on Saturday, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Donald Anderson, said the government should make available more information about the source which said Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger.

The uranium claim, which was also first made public in the September dossier, was used by both governments to build a case for going to war over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The claim was then cited in President Bush’s State of the Union speech to Congress in January.

Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

The White House now says that was a mistake – the CIA had information that the Niger claim was based on fraudulent documents.

The head of the CIA, George Tenet, has taken the blame for its inclusion in the speech and Bush has said he now considers the matter closed.

Lack of Communication

However, on Saturday the UK defended the Niger claim, saying it had intelligence from a separate source that the CIA did not know about.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UK had additional information to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, but this intelligence had not been passed on to the US administration.

The comments, in a letter from Straw to senior Labour MP Anderson, reveals a lack of consultation between British and US intelligence officials.

It shows that the US did not reveal a report compiled by a special envoy in Niger rubbishing suggestions that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium – while Britain did not reveal to America its own intelligence on African uranium because it came from another foreign intelligence service.