Tony Blair & The Niger connection

[T_i_B]

Today's UK Independent front page splash.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=423258

The first official explanation from the US for its gullibility over Niger was that "we fell for it". This is now known to be a falsehood because CIA analysts and the State Department had already informed the Bush administration a year earlier that the Niger allegations were bogus. This week, the White House belatedly admitted that President Bush should not have included the discredited intelligence claims that Saddam had been seeking to buy uranium in Africa in his State of the Union address at the end of January.

But Tony Blair was adamant in testimony this week that the UK had "separate intelligence" on Iraqi attempts to import uranium from Africa. Last night, the Foreign Office stated that Britain's information was based on "additional evidence other than documents, forged or genuine".

Britain has not handed this "evidence" to the IAEA for assessment, despite its obligations under the mandatory UN Security Council resolution 1441 to do so. The Foreign Office maintained last night that "we comply fully with our obligations to provide evidence with the IAEA" but that "in the case of uranium from Niger, we did not have any UK-originated intelligence to pass on".

A UN diplomatic source told The Independent that the UK position was "incredible". Another diplomatic source said: "The only concrete evidence the UN got was the Niger set of letters and it was told that there was nothing else."