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

To: Neocon who wrote (107785)	7/24/2003 4:26:35 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<Fake Niger uranium documents came from private source in Italy: US official Thu Jul 17, 6:40 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - A private source gave the US embassy in Rome forged documents detailing alleged Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Niger, a senior State Department official said. "In October 2002, we acquired these documents in Rome from a private source, a non-governmental source and they were immediately shared with all the appropriate agencies," the official said. "The embassy shared them with all the relevant agencies at post and they were then shared again when they got back to Washington," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The official would not confirm reports in the Italian press that the documents had been given to the embassy by a foreign journalist. Italy's leading newspaper Corriere della Serra said the journalist was "very probably Italian" as Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini denied that Rome had any hand in passing the documents on to the United States. Italy has found itself at the center of an international row over the now-discredited information. In particular, questions have been raised over the role of Italy's military intelligence services SISMI, after widespread reports that it was the origin of the fake documents. The US FBI (news - web sites) said Thursday it had opened an investigation into the origin of the false documents. "We do have an investigation. It's a pending matter," Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman Ed Cogswell said. The documents, which the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has now published, were used by the State Department two months after they were obtained in a fact sheet pointing out omissions in Iraq (news - web sites)'s prewar declaration to the United Nations (news - web sites) on its weapons programs. The Niger allegations then became part of the US campaign to convince the world community that Iraq was still pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but were dropped after the CIA (news - web sites) and other intelligence agencies in Washington cast doubt on their veracity. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency revealed publicly in March that the documents had been forged. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher admitted earlier this week that the inclusion of the Niger allegation in the December 19 fact sheet had been a mistake given the questions about the authenticity of the documents received by the Rome embassy. On Thursday, Boucher declined to comment on the source of the documents or say where they had been turned over to the United States but confirmed that they had been obtained in October 2002. But he stressed that there was unrelated intelligence predating the acquisition of the Rome documents that indicated Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa generally and Niger specifically. "There was information prior to this (of) allegations that Niger might have sold uranium to Iraq," Boucher said. "While the idea that Niger sold uranium to Iraq has been classified as false or highly dubious or many other things there had been reports that Iraq had was out seeking to purchase uranium there and in other places in Africa," he said. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Neocon who wrote (107785)	7/24/2003 4:28:20 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<Italy Journalist Says Gave U.S. Iraq-Niger Papers Sat Jul 19, 6:00 AM ET ROME (Reuters) - An Italian journalist said in an interview published Saturday she gave documents on Iraq (news - web sites) seeking uranium from Niger to the U.S. embassy in Rome in 2002 to try to find out if the information was credible. The documents have become central to a charged debate over whether President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), knowingly or not, made exaggerated claims over Iraq's nuclear weapons program to justify going to war. A senior State Department official said Thursday the United States had acquired the documents from "a private source, non-governmental," in Rome. Elisabetta Burba, a journalist with Italian current affairs weekly Panorama, said it was she who handed over the papers to the U.S. embassy in October 2002 after acquiring them from a source she could not name but who was not linked to Italian secret services. "I knew the documents could represent a huge world scoop...but there were many details that I found unconvincing," Burba said in an interview with daily Corriere della Sera. She said after checks in Niger failed to satisfy her that the documents were reliable, Panorama decided not to publish the story. Burba, meanwhile, had given the documents to U.S. embassy officials in Rome to try to find out if they were credible. Media reports had suggested Italy's military intelligence agency, Sismi, had passed on the false documents to U.S. or British secret services -- a suggestion which was denied by an Italian government official. Bush said in his annual State of the Union speech in January that the British government had information that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. White House officials have said the claim should not have appeared in the speech because it did not meet the standard of reliability necessary for inclusion in a major address by the president. But the British government has said it had other intelligence beyond the discredited documents and was sticking by the allegations. story.news.yahoo.com