Pressure mounts for Blair to recant

By ANDREW GRICE and DAVID USBORNE

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under mounting pressure over Iraq's weapons programme after he refused to withdraw discredited claims by the secret intelligence service MI6 that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium to make nuclear weapons.

The controversy over documents supplied by MI6 and exposed as crude forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency before the war in Iraq, threatens to erupt into a full-blown political scandal on both sides of the Atlantic, ensnaring Blair and President George W. Bush.

Yesterday the Prime Minister stood by the dossier on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction issued by the Government last September, which included the claim that Iraq had "sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa" even though it has no active civil nuclear power programme.

On the same day the foreign affairs committee in Congress was given secret testimony that Niger had provided Iraq with 500 tonnes of uranium oxide for its secret nuclear bomb programme.

The threat of Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons became a linchpin in both Governments' campaign to build a case for war.

But the IAEA blew the allegation apart in March after a cursory investigation.

Yesterday Robin Cook, a former Foreign Secretary, urged Blair to withdraw his claim in the House of Commons last September that Saddam was actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

The Prime Minister said at the time: "We know that Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa, although we do not know whether he has been successful."

Cook, who resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war, challenged Blair in the Commons, asking if he had been advised that the documents on which the claim was based were forged.

He asked Blair to correct the record now by saying "he regrets that in all good faith he gave the House information which has since turned out to be wrong".

Blair refused to do so, insisting there was intelligence to back up the claim. He said: "I'm not going into the details of what particular intelligence it was. But there was intelligence judged by the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time to be correct."

He said the Government was not in a position "to say whether that is so or not" until after the investigation to be carried out by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.

Yesterday the IAEA expressed surprise that Blair did not take the opportunity to abandon the allegation.

Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: "These were blatant forgeries. We were able to determine that they were forgeries very quickly."

It became apparent to the rest of the world only in March that the basis of the allegation - letters purportedly exchanged between Iraqi agents and the Government of Iraq - had been faked.

What is embarrassing is how rudimentary the forgeries turned out to be. One such letter had apparently been signed by a Niger foreign minister who, at the time of its signing, had been out of office for a decade.

The letters contained several other basic errors: the logo on the letterhead was incorrect and the day of the week cited did not match the actual date.


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Herald Feature: Iraq