Posted on 08/09/2003 5:41:37 PM PDT by woofie
This is the Iraqi diplomat Britain accuses of trying to buy uranium for Saddam. If what he has told us is true, his evidence will blow apart one of Mr Blair's main justifications for war
The man accused by Britain of trying to buy uranium in Africa for Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme - one of the Government's main justifications for waging war on Iraq - has denied the allegation, saying he is the victim of a forgery.
Britain has remained undaunted by proof that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with the West African state of Niger turned out to be fakes. While the US admits it should never have made allegations based on the documents, Britain insists it has "independent intelligence" about Iraq's quest for uranium, pointing out that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger in 1999.
One Foreign Office official said: "Niger has two main exports - uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens."
But the man who made the trip, Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's former ambassador to the Vatican, told The Independent on Sunday: "My only mission was to meet the President of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq. The invitation and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal UN sanctions were all we talked about. I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium."
Mr Zahawie, 73, speaking to the British press for the first time, said in London: "I have been cleared by everyone else, including the US and the United Nations. I am surprised to hear there are still question marks over me in Britain. I am willing to co-operate with anyone who wants to see me and find out more."
The Government's September dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction said the regime "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it". The allegation found its way into President George Bush's State of the Union address in January. But as one element after another of this claim has been disproved, the Government has increasingly focused attention on Mr Zahawie's visit to Niger.
As The IoS first disclosed on 29 June, a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger last year to investigate. He reported that there was nothing in the claims of a uranium deal, but the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said last month: "Ambassador Wilson's report also noted that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation sought the expansion of trade links with Niger. Uranium is Niger's main export ... this element of Ambassador Wilson's report supports the statement in the Government's dossier."
Mr Zahawie, who went to Niger in February 1999, said he knew of no other visit to the country that year by an Iraqi representative, and believed none had been there since.
The former ambassador believes suspicion fell on him because his name appeared in forged documents given to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Last week the IAEA confirmed that two interviews took place with Mr Zahawie in Baghdad this year.
Mr Zahawie said he was summoned to Baghdad in February from Jordan to meet a team of inspectors from the IAEA. He was asked whether he had signed a letter on 6 July 2000 to Niger concerning uranium. "I said absolutely not; if they had seen such a letter it must be a forgery."
Later he was asked for a facsimile of his signature. He provided copies of letters he had written in Rome, and "those letters must have convinced the IAEA team that the document they had was a forgery". In early March, on the eve of war in Iraq, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council that the Niger documents were "not authentic".
The ex-ambassador's account is the first indication the forgeries, thought to have been sold to Italian intelligence by an African diplomat, included a document purporting to come from the Iraqi side.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "In the 1980s Iraq purchased 270 tons of uranium from Niger. The reference in the dossier was based on intelligence drawn from more than one source, and was not based on the so-called documents put to the IAEA."
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook said: "It is long overdue for the Government to come clean about what is this corroboration on which they build such an extravagant castle. At least let them hand it over to the IAEA."
It was a social visit
Maybe the Brits and Euroweeniess should. I hear their chickens are dying of the heat, but Niger's obviously aren't--if this is true--in spite of the fact that there aren't too many hotter places in the world.
They are the ones who cooked up the fraudulent documents to muddy the water when it was discovered that they were willng to sell uranium to Iraq.
This is desperation on the part of the writer. He states the obvious, but still seems to think that a denial from Zahawie as to his public purpose in Niger is sufficient to debunk the war.
The war did not start in 2003. It has been underway for 12 years. We have just finished it. We didn't need any justification from Niger to finish it, what we needed was to finish it. We have done that.
That Iraq was trying to obtain uranium would not be difficult to surmise. They sent a trade delegation to Niger to obtain what? Niger's only export of note is uranium. Iraq already has hundreds of tons of the stuff, which they obtained in, guess, Niger.
What is the evidence that it didn't happen? Wilson, former diplomat and Gore campaign manager went there and asked. He asked a government functionary, who denied it, and he asked the French mining company, who also denied it. And of the stories that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium? Niger officials had heard rumors, but knew nothing, he said. And the Iraqi trade delegation? No word as to what its purpose was.
Bush's charge, of course, was not that Iraq had obtained uranium, but that Iraq had sought it. That much is pretty obvious on the face of it. Wilson says that the deal didn't happen. He doesn't state that Iraq didn't try; just that Niger government memories seem vague on that point.
But if the purchase, or the attempted purchase of uranium is important enough in some minds to justify war, or debunk it if not true, what do you do with the fact that there are already hundreds of tons of the stuff in Iraq, as reported in press reports detailing radiation poisoning among Iraqis exposed to yellowcake uranium. If we are supposed to worry if Iraq does or does not obtain it, what do we do with the fact that they already do have it?
But Niger yellowcake was not the justification for the war. The ongoing war was the justification for the war. We did not seek him out, our history shows that we tried over many years to coopt him, to find ways to work with him, and when we could not work with him, we spent 12 years in a low level conflict trying to modify his behavior.
But in the post 9/11 world, we are not waiting for toxic situations to get worse, and we are not waiting for our enemies to get stronger than they are. We will seek them out, and deal with them, and finish them. And that is what we have done.
Which is why I believe France was so "reluctant" for the coalition to go into Iraq and remove Saddam from power. I think if Dr. Kay and the other investigators keep digging they'll find than just buried planes. They'll find documents that smell of eau de France mingled with Russian spice and perhaps even a tinge of German beer.
And we have Gore and his ilk demanding we be more like those europeans.......
We need to keep Tony Blair in our prayers.
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