African nation says: we never sold uranium to Saddam

The minister in charge of uranium mines in the west African state of Niger has demolished a key claim by Tony Blair on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The Prime Minister said during a joint press conference with President Bush in Washington on Thursday that it was "known for certain" that Saddam Hussein's regime bought 270 tons of uranium from Niger in the 1980s. This makes it likely, in Britain's view, that Iraq returned for more in the 1990s. But Rabiou Hassane Yari, Niger's Minister of Mines and Energy, told The Independent on Sunday yesterday that he was "sure and certain" his country had never sold uranium to Iraq.

Of Mr Blair's claim that 270 tons had been purchased in the 1980s, he said: "It's not true. The Iraqis asked, but there was never any transaction." He added that the request was not secret. It was "officially made and officially turned down".

Britain and the US "wanted to make war", said Mr Yari. "They needed an argument. They found one."

One of the few pieces of evidence ever cited by the US and Britain to support their claim that Saddam was trying to build nuclear weapons is that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. But this part of their case for going to war has caused serious embarrassment for both London and Washington.

A day after Mr Blair spoke, it emerged that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with Niger in the 1990s had been received by the US State Department last year, months earlier than had previously been admitted. When copies of the documents were finally handed over to the UN's nuclear agency, it quickly denounced them as obvious fakes.

The Bush administration had said it did not see the documents until after 28 January, when the President declared in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. But The Washington Post reported that the State Department distributed copies of the now-discredited documents nearly three months before Mr Bush's speech. The US waited even longer to share the information with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), finally handing it over in February.

The forged documents were originally sold to Italian intelligence by an African diplomat, but Seymour Hersh, the renowned American investigative journalist, advanced a startling new theory last week.

The forgeries were so crude, Mr Hersh told a seminar in London, that he believed they could have been a hoax: one that deceived more people than its perpetrators could ever have imagined.

Elements were missing from crests on letterheads, the signature of Niger's President was transparently faked and one letter was attributed to a minister who left office in the 1980s. Other errors could be detected with a few minutes' research on the internet.

But Britain, cited in the State of the Union address as the source of the claim, insists it has "separate intelligence" on Iraq's quest for uranium in Africa. The Government has refused to tell the IAEA what it knows, however, arguing that the information came from a third country, and that it is up to that country to disclose it. But the IAEA says there is no such exemption from Britain's obligations under UN Security Council resolutions.

Both the content of the "separate intelligence" and its source have been the subject of much speculation. Suggestions in Whitehall last week that the information came from France, the former colonial master of Niger, which still holds a controlling interest in its uranium-mining industry, were strongly denied in Paris.

Some analysts point to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, arguing that Britain and the US rely on Mossad for much of their information on Africa, because the Israelis have far more intelligence assets there than they do. It was possible, they added, that Britain had fallen victim to disinformation concocted by Israel to discredit Iraq.

But while the source remains obscure, both Mr Blair and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, have hinted in recent days that their information is based on the supposed purpose of an Iraqi delegation that visited Niger in 1999.

A former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, asked by the CIA to investigate the uranium claims, reported that Niger officials denied them.

But Mr Straw said: "Ambassador Wilson's report also noted that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation sought the expansion of trade links with Niger ­ and that former Niger government officials believed that this was in connection with the procurement of yellowcake [uranium that has undergone the first stage of refinement].

"Uranium is Niger's main export. In other words, this element of Ambassador Wilson's report supports the statement in the Government's [September] dossier [on Iraq's WMD]."

Mr Blair told a Commons questioner: "We know in the 1980s that Iraq purchased from Niger over 270 tons of uranium, and therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility ­ let's at least put it like this ­ that they went back to Niger again. That is why I stand by entirely the statement that was made in the September dossier."

But Mr Yari, whose entire career has been spent in his country's mines ministry, said: "Uranium is not soup or mineral water. It's not sold like that." Apart from France's watching eye, he pointed out that the west African country was subject to regular IAEA checks.

"Basically, the Government's 'information' appears to be nothing more than a deduction, and an unlikely one at that," said Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge University expert on WMD.

Additional reporting by Paul Lashmar