http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=3085095

Diplomat: U.N. Thinks British Proof Based on Fakes
Mon July 14, 2003 11:04 AM ET
By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog believes Britain's
evidence on Iraq trying to import uranium from Africa is all based on forged
documents, a diplomat close to the agency said Monday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last year intelligence showed Iraq
had banned weapons of mass destruction and was trying to import uranium from
Niger to support its nuclear arms program.

President Bush included the allegation in his State of the Union address in
January, citing the British findings. But the White House said last week the
claim was based on forged documents and should have been left out of the
speech. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Monday said its evidence was
not linked to the forged documents. It came from a third country and the
Americans had not seen it.

"This information on which we relied, which was completely separate from the
now notorious forged documents, came from foreign intelligence sources,"
Straw told BBC Radio.

A Western diplomat close the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) said the IAEA had the impression the so-called genuine
evidence was ultimately referring to the same alleged transaction described
in a series of fake documents.

"I understand that it concerned the same group of documents and the same
transaction," the diplomat told Reuters on condition on anonymity. Another
diplomat said he thought Britain's other evidence came from French
intelligence services.

BRIEFINGS

Blair, who meets Bush in Washington Thursday, is facing mounting accusations
that he overplayed the intelligence findings, knowingly or unknowingly, to
justify going to war with Iraq. Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who
once headed the IAEA, delivered a fresh blow Sunday when he said Britain
committed a "fundamental mistake" when it said Saddam Hussein could deploy w
eapons of mass destruction at 45-minutes notice.

The IAEA's impression arose from briefings on intelligence about Iraq
gathered by national intelligence agencies.

Most of these briefings took place between November and March while the IAEA
was hunting for signs Baghdad had secretly renewed its nuclear weapons
program.

While IAEA officials did not actually see Britain's so-called genuine
evidence, the diplomat said the IAEA had been briefed about it and concluded
it referred to the same transaction which the agency now believes was never
attempted.

In a July 1 letter to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from
California, the IAEA's director of external relations wrote that it was
clear that Iraq would never have been able to buy uranium from Niger.

"The alleged contract could not have been honored, as the export of uranium
from Niger is fully controlled by international companies," IAEA's Piet de
Klerk wrote.

After determining it would have been impossible for Iraq to import uranium
from the world's number-three uranium producer, the IAEA looked more closely
at the six letters submitted as evidence that Iraq tried to buy two 500-ton
shipments of uranium and concluded that all were fakes.


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