The Niger timebomb

[DoYouEverWonder]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=432241

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.

By Raymond Whitaker

9 August 2003 19:51

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.

<snip>

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."

<snip>

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.

[Wonder]

1. I wonder regularly I

I DO! "victim of a forgery" nice title for a love song! or a book!

[robbedvoter]

2. So, that makes the 16 words no longer "tecnically true"?

"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."
So, this was UK's "independent sources' that made W's 16 words "technically true" right?

[T_i_B]

3. Blair's a liar, what a suprise!

Let me guess, the letter was signed by Mickey Mouse but that got conveniently overlooked. :eyes:

This is an important story and deserves plenty of :kick:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=432228

[nolabels]

4. The smear Job was so weak , that the best I could find was this

These guys didn't do there their homework very well, this little rag is such a piece

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/terencejeffrey/tj20030730.shtml
Iraqi nuke hawk went to Niger
Terence Jeffrey (archive)
July 30, 2003 | Print | Send


Wissam al Zahawie, the Iraqi official whom the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says went on a "trade mission" to uranium-exporting Niger in 1999, had a record of promoting resentment against America and Israel and of making Iraq's case for building a nuclear bomb.


Zahawie's record raises questions about the thoroughness of the IAEA investigation of his trip to Niger, and its candor in reporting the findings of that investigation.

At a 1995 U.N. conference on extending the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Zahawie (sometimes spelled "Zahawi") argued that unless Israel was stripped of nuclear weapons, other states would need to engage in "a secret or public" arms race to "restore a certain balance."

In an official U.N. summary of the April 24, 1995, session of this conference -- provided to me by the United Nations Library -- Zahawie sometimes referred to Israel as the "entity." "In that entity," the summary cites him as saying, "there was a powerful opposition party which was expected to win the forthcoming elections and which was urging that not a single inch of the occupied territories should be surrendered, and was ready, in its fanaticism, to go to any lengths, whatever the cost. It was not hard to see what that party would do with its nuclear bomb."
(snip)