By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The CIA expressed doubts as it passed along prewar claims that Iraq sought uranium from the African country of Niger, a senior intelligence official said Thursday. The allegations made it into President Bush's State of the Union address anyway.
About a month after Bush's speech, the United Nations determined the uranium reports were based primarily on forged documents initially obtained by European intelligence agencies.
A Bush administration official said the information was vetted by relevant agencies, and it was included in the president's speech because at the time it was believed to be reliable. It is no longer regarded as such.
The Washington Post, quoting unidentified U.S. officials, said the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White or other government agencies.
The U.S. intelligence official, however, said the CIA's doubts were made known to other federal agencies through various internal communications, starting more than a year before the war began.
The reports first surfaced around the end of 2001, when the British and Italian governments told the United States they had intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. That uranium, once fully processed, could be used in a nuclear weapon.
At the time, the allies did not describe their sources, which turned out to be a series of letters purportedly between officials in Niger and Iraq, the intelligence official said. In 2003, U.N. experts determined the letters were forgeries.
The CIA distributed the Europeans' information to the rest of the government in early 2002 and noted that the allegations lacked "specifics and details and we're unable to corroborate them," the senior intelligence official said.
The CIA asked a retired diplomat to investigate the reports. The diplomat went to Niger in February 2002 and spoke with officials who denied having any uranium dealings with Iraq. That information was shared with British officials, and also was reported widely within the U.S. government, the senior intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The British included their information in a public statement on Sept. 24, 2002, citing intelligence sources, that said Iraq "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That same day, a U.S. intelligence official expressed doubts to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a closed session about the truth of the uranium reports.
The reports made it into the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that was distributed throughout the U.S. government. But it also said they were uncorroborated and not necessarily believed, the intelligence official said.
Other, fragmentary U.S. intelligence also pointed to an Iraqi effort to acquire uranium in Africa. But the forged letters remained the key source, although it is unclear how much the CIA knew at this point about the original letters acquired by the Europeans.
A public report, gleaned from the classified intelligence estimate and published by the CIA in early October, made no mention of the specific uranium allegation. The CIA did not think the report was reliable enough to be included, the intelligence official said.
A former intelligence official at the State Department, Greg Thielmann, said the Niger uranium claim was long regarded with skepticism. Thielmann retired in September 2002.
However, the uranium report was published in a State Department fact sheet that was put out last Dec. 19 to poke holes in Iraqis' massive declaration to the United Nations in which they said they had no prohibited weapons. The CIA tried unsuccessfully to have it edited out of the fact sheet before it was published, the official said.
It was omitted from future statements by State Department officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5 address to the United Nations.
STOP! We don't believe your unnamed sources, capiche? This is post-Jayson Blair. If there's anyone to doubt, it's the mainstream press.
By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - The United States and Britain are delaying the return of tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees who fled to Iran during the reign of Saddam Hussein, a senior Iranian official said Thursday.
As a result, Iran has had to postpone a voluntary repatriation program for 200,000 Iraqis living within its borders, said Ahmad Hosseini, Iran's director general for refugee issues.
"We're facing problems created by the occupying powers that prevent us from returning these refugees," Hosseini told reporters before a meeting with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
"The occupying powers believe it's not the proper time for all Iraqis who reside abroad to go back," he said without elaborating.
In Washington, the State Department said it was working with the United Nations, surrounding governments and Iraqis to "support well-ordered returns at the earliest possible date."
"The U.S. welcomes a voluntary, orderly and well-timed repatriation program for Iraqi refugees as an essential element of restoring normal life in Iraq."
Two weeks ago, British and other European officials said they were making plans to repatriate many of the 225,000 Iraqis who have sought asylum in Europe. But after talks with the U.N. refugee agency they said they would delay returns because many parts of the country were unsafe.
Hosseini took issue with the view that poor security was the problem. "We have not witnessed any kind of events that prove the situation in Iraq is insecure," he said.
He quoted UNHCR as saying repatriation was impossible until the United States and Britain agree to it.
UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville said while the agreement of the two coalition partners was important, he did not believe they were blocking returns.
"Many people are eager to go back and are doing so of their own accord ... but we haven't quite got to the point of launching organized repatriation," he told The Associated Press.
Around 4 million Iraqis are believed to have fled Saddam's regime. In Iran they include many who left during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
About 48,000 of the Iraqis in Iran live in refugee camps, while the remainder are hosted by communities across the country, Hosseini said.
People who fled during Saddam's rule should go back now that the former leader has been ousted, Hosseini said.
He also said Iran is having trouble coping with its 1.9 million Afghan refugees. Iran spends $675 a year on each refugee but only a small fraction of that is covered by aid donors.
Some 4 million Afghans fled, mostly to Iran and Pakistan, to escape two decades of conflict and their homeland's Taliban government, which was overthrown in a U.S.-led war in 2001.
Two million people have gone home since the Taliban's ouster, 400,000 of them from Iran.