Iraq uranium claim creates trans-Atlantic rift
Tony Blair is coming under mounting pressure to authorise an independent inquiry into the Iraqi dossiers affair after a trans-Atlantic split opened up over crucial intelligence.
CIA director George Tenet apologised for allowing US President George W Bush to refer to an alleged Iraqi bid to buy uranium from the African state of Niger in January’s State of the Union address.
Mr Tenet said his agency should have warned the President off, since it doubted the British finding.
But while admitting that the CIA raised concerns about the Niger claim, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended the decision to include a claim that Saddam tried to acquire uranium from Niger in last September’s government dossier.
He insisted that the claim contained in the dossier was based on separate, reliable intelligence which Britain had not shared with the US.
UK government sources said that that was because the information emanated from foreign sources, and Britain was therefore not at liberty to share it with Washington.
But former Leader of the Commons and one-time Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit the Cabinet over Iraq, said: “It is time that the government came clean and published the extra evidence they claim proves there was a uranium deal.
“If it was not good enough to be in the President’s address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister’s dossier.”
In a letter to Donald Anderson, chairman of the British House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, Mr Straw said: “The media have reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about this element of the September dossier. This is correct.
“However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier’s statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US (for good reasons, which I have given your committee in private session). A judgment was therefore made to retain it.”
Mr Straw added that the Joint Intelligence committee’s assessment of Iraq’s efforts to reconstitute its nuclear programme did not rest on the attempted acquisition of yellowcake (lightly processed uranium ore) alone.
Mr Straw wrote: “The government’s dossier catalogued a range of other procurement activities, and referred to intelligence that scientists had been recalled to the programme in 1998. You will be aware of the recent discovery of technical documentation and centrifuge parts – necessary for the enrichment of uranium – buried at the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist in Baghdad.”
Shadow UK foreign secretary Michael Ancram said Mr Straw’s letter did little to clarify the situation.
In a statement, Mr Ancram said: “Drip feeding of information by correspondence of this sort tends to confuse rather than clarify the situation.
“We believe that an independent judicial inquiry is the most sensible way of establishing the facts.”
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said: “Day by day the case for an independent scrutiny of the lead up to the war against Iraq becomes irresistible.
“Only full disclosure can restore the reputation of this Government.”
Mr Anderson argued that Mr Straw’s letter put the Niger issue into a new light.
Mr Anderson said that Mr Straw’s letter suggested that “although the US had come to a certain view, on the evidence available to them, we have independent evidence which cannot be disclosed to the US.”
Mr Anderson said: “My committee cannot go further than that but Ann Taylor’s Intelligence and Security Committee can pursue it, and ask questions, such as the reliability of the source of that evidence.”
