Blair firm on uranium claim

2003-07-16 16:13

London - Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he stands by a claim made in September that intelligence sources said Iraq was seeking supplies of uranium in Africa.

Questions have been raised in the Unite States about President George W Bush's claim in January that Iraq sought uranium from Africa - a statement apparently based on forged documents. In the January 28 speech, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Blair told House of Commons: "The intelligence on which we based this was not the so-called forged documents that have been put to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the IAEA have accepted that they got no such forged documents from British intelligence. We have independent intelligence to that effect."

- SAPA