Iraq uranium: 'Bush was wrong'

2003-07-08 12:50

Washington - The White House has acknowledged for the first time that President George W Bush should not have claimed in his state-of-the-union address that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said the statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report that raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince congress that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programme was a threat to United States security.

Asked about the British report, the administration released a statement that effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's statement was wrong, said the Post.

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the state-of-the-union speech," the paper quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying.

CIA report came back negative

Bush said in his speech on January 28 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

The International Atomic Energy Agency told the United Nations security council in March that the uranium story was based on forged documents.

The Central Intelligence Agency had dispatched a former senior diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate the claim and received a report from him saying the allegations were false, according to the paper.

But the administration never made Wilson's mission public, the report said.

- AFX