Iraq data twisted says envoy

NEW YORK - A former United States ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger for the CIA accused the Bush Administration yesterday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Joseph Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, detailed his role in investigating the report - which turned out to be a forgery - in an article in the New York Times.

The report was cited by President George W. Bush and Britain to support their charges that Saddam was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and to justify their invasion of Iraq in March.

"Based on my experience with the Administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," Wilson wrote.

Controversy is raging in Britain and the US over charges that the governments of the two countries manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. No evidence of such weapons has been found by the occupying forces in Iraq.

Wilson, who helped to direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, said he was the "unnamed former envoy" who news media have said travelled to Niger in February last year to check the report of a uranium deal between the west African country and Iraq.

At the request of the CIA, which was to report his findings to Vice-President Dick Cheney, Wilson said he spent more than a week meeting current and former Niger Government officials and people associated with the uranium business.

"It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," he said.

Wilson said he reported his findings in detail to the CIA and the State Department. But in January this year Bush "repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa," Wilson said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq