White House says Iraq uranium claim forged

By BEN RUSSELL and ANDREW BUNCOMBE in Washington

The White House has dealt a devastating blow to Tony Blair after it rejected as flawed British claims Saddam Hussein attempted to buy uranium from Africa to restart his nuclear weapons programme.

The Bush administration was in full retreat today, as officials admitted that the allegation should not have been included in President George Bush's State of the Union address.

The American admission represented the first major split between London and Washington over the case against Saddam and exploded into a full-scale row in Westminster as Mr Blair told senior MPs the British Government stood by its story.

But Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour backbenchers demanded that Mr Blair release the intelligence behind the uranium allegation to an independent inquiry.

In his address to the US Congress in January, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

But a statement approved by the White House on Monday night said: "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.

"There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa. However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made." It added: "In other words a senior White House official told The New York Times we couldn't prove it and it might in fact be wrong."

The White House walked away from the British allegations in the face of a sceptical report from the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee and claims from retired US ambassador Joseph Wilson that he found the allegations of a link between Niger and Saddam to be false.

He was sent to the state by the CIA to investigate the claims nine months before Mr Bush's address. It is the first time the US had admitted publicly key "evidence" backing the claim that Iraq was trying to "reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme" was incorrect. The threat of Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons became a key element in the British and American governments' case for war.

Tony Blair told MPs in September that Saddam was "actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability". Mr Blair insisted yesterday the intelligence services stood by their allegation Iraq tried to acquire uranium, despite a report by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) in March that dismissed the claims as based on crude forgeries.

Questioned about the Niger affair by members of the Commons Liaison Committee, Mr Blair said the claims were based on multiple sources and did not rely on the forged documents obtained by the IAEA.

He said: "There was an historic link between Niger and Iraq. In the 1980s Iraq purchased somewhere in the region of 200 tonnes of uranium from Niger. The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called forged documents. They came from separate intelligence."

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, renewed his call for an independent inquiry into the run-up to war.

He told The Independent: "Once again, the Prime Minister is making assertions about contested intelligence assessments. The Niger documents are known to have been falsified, yet Tony Blair continues to insist the intelligence was accurate. The Bush administration now appears to be backing away from these claims. Once again it raises the question: did we go to war on a false premise?"

Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, added: "The only way that Tony Blair can establish the veracity of such intelligence information ... is to allow it to be examined in the context of an independent judicial inquiry. Given the total distrust of anything the Prime Minister says, it is vital for the re-establishment of the credibility of the intelligence services this process is now undertaken."

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was challenged about the claims on the floor of the Commons. Questioned by Richard Ottoway, a Conservative member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Straw said: "The information which was included in the dossier and assessed as reliable relating to the purchase of uranium, not that they had purchased it but Iraq had sought to purchase it, was based on sources quite separate than those based on the forged documents."

Mystery still surrounds the origins of the claim that Saddam attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Senior Foreign Office officials have admitted that it came from a foreign intelligence service, but insist that it fits into a pattern of evidence that Saddam was attempting to revive his nuclear weapons programme.

Ministers have confirmed that they have not passed information about Niger to the IAEA, despite a commitment in UN Security Council resolution 1441 to co-operate with the nuclear weapons inspectorate.

The Government received a boost in its dispute with the BBC over a report claiming Downing Street "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with a claim that they could be deployed within 45 minutes.

An official at the Ministry of Defence admitted meeting the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan a week before the claim was broadcast, but denied making any comment about Downing Street's involvement in adding the reference.

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