Bush's speech 'accurate'

2003-07-13 17:29

William C Mann

Washington - The Bush administration said on Sunday the president's statement in the State of the Union address about Iraq seeking uranium was accurate and is supported by other British and US information.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, however, said the statement should not have been in the Jan. 20 speech, in which Bush laid out reasons for military action against Iraq.

"We have a higher standard for presidential speeches" than raw intelligence, she said.

In the speech, George W. Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

US intelligence agencies had raised questions previously about assertions of such activity by the Iraqi president.

Rice said CIA Director George Tenet had removed from a Bush speech in Cincinnati three months earlier a more specific reference to Iraqi efforts to buy uranium for nuclear weapons.

Underlying documents to support the British contention proved to have been forged.

Tenet assumed responsibility Friday for not insisting that the statement be removed.

"It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa," Rice said.

"This was part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.

"But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that.

"Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate," a classified document compiled by US agencies, she said.

"The British stand by their statement," Rice said. "They have told us that despite the fact that we had apparently some concerns about that report, that they had other sources, and that they stand by the statement."

Asked whether she or her colleagues in the administration had seen such additional British evidence, Rice said: "The British have reasons, because of the arrangements that they made, apparently, in receiving those sources, that they cannot share them with us.

"We have every reason to believe that the British services are quite reliable."

- AP