[Media-watch] Butler 'wrong' on Iraq uranium link - Independent on Sunday - 25/07/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=544436



Butler 'wrong' on Iraq uranium link
By Raymond Whitaker
25 July 2004

A leading nuclear expert has pointed out a technical error in the Butler
report on WMD intelligence in Iraq, and criticised the committee's finding
that intelligence on Saddam Hussein seeking uranium from Africa was
"credible".

The Butler report demolished the most controversial allegation in the
Government's September 2002 WMD dossier - that Iraq could deploy chemical or
biological weapons in 45 minutes - but observers were surprised that the
uranium claim passed scrutiny.

American investigators have dismissed the suggestion that Iraq was seeking
uranium from the west African state of Niger in a quest for nuclear weapons,
because it was based on forged documents. It was also inherently
implausible, they added, since Iraq had 550 tons of "yellowcake" - uranium
which has undergone the first stage of processing. But the Butler committee
accepted the Government's contention that it had separate intelligence,
which has never been disclosed, to support the claim.

Norman Dombey, retired professor of theoretical physics at Sussex
University, said yesterday that the Butler report wrongly described Iraq's
stocks of uranium as unprocessed. But Professor Dombey, credited with
pointing out numerous flaws in the story of an Iraqi defector whose nuclear
claims were widely circulated in the US during the 1990s, was more critical
of the committee's intelligence findings on the Niger issue. "The Butler
report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger
in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this
is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines," he said.

Last year this newspaper interviewed the now-retired diplomat, Wissam
al-Zahawie, who said he had been sent on a tour of African countries in 1999
to invite their leaders to a trade fair in Iraq. In Niger he met only the
President, who was assassinated two months later. British intelligence on
the issue appears to be based entirely on speculation by other Niger
officials about the purpose of Mr Zahawie's visit.

Professor Dombey pointed out that the recent Senate Intelligence Committee
report in the US quoted widespread scepticism about the British information
on Niger. One agency said "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in
Africa are highly dubious". Asked by the committee to comment on Britain's
WMD dossier, the deputy director of central intelligence, John McLaughlin,
said "they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch" on the
African uranium question, adding: "I think they reached a little bit on that
one point." Another senior official singled out the same part of the
dossier, saying: "They put more emphasis on the uranium acquisition in
Africa than we would."

Despite doubts at the time, George Bush said in his January 2003 State of
the Union address that "the British government has learnt that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". The
head of the CIA, George Tenet, who has since stepped down, apologised for
its inclusion. But Britain stood by the claim, saying it was not based on
the forged documents that had fooled other countries. Other US intelligence
on the issue was conspicuously thin, the Senate committee noted.