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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (106936)	7/21/2003 7:43:02 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

According to some press accounts, the memo was obtained by Italian intelligence and sent to Washington. The Italian gov't denies this. Which doesn't necessarily mean anything. Other press accounts claim French intelligence is behind it. The forged document named a Niger official who had been out of office 14 years, so it was easily discreditable. One would think a party which wanted war would not make a mistake of that sort. Though some one who wanted to embarrass the pro-war forces might feed them some discreditable forged evidence in the hopes they'd rashly go public with it and have to retract it later. At any rate, the memo was announced as a forgery in March before the war. Also the British say they have independent evidence which hasn't been discredited that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa in recent years. Iraq did buy yellowcake from Niger - a lot of it - in 1981 and 1982. US officials tell VOA that Iraq did obtain uranium from Niger two decades ago and that three years ago the two countries signed a secret agreement to resume the shipments. The original sales are documented in a 1997 United Nations report submitted to the Security Council by Hans Blix, then director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and currently chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq. Iraq keeps quiet on second shipment That report, obtained by VOA, says Iraq received two large shipments from Niger of "yellowcake," a term describing a colourful, concentrated form of uranium ore used in nuclear programs, either for fuel or weapons. One shipment, received in February 1981, consisted of nearly 140 tons of "yellowcake." The second shipment, received in March of 1982, consisted of a nearly identical amount. The UN report notes that Iraq notified the International Atomic Energy Agency of the first shipment but not the second. africaonline.com