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BREAKING NEWS
This story is from our news.com.au network Source: AFP
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French link to UK's Iraq intelligence
From correspondents in London
TWO foreign intelligence services, thought to be those of France and Italy, supplied Britain with the information for its controversial claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, the Financial Times newspaper reported Monday.
Britain made the uranium claim in a dossier last September despite being told the US Central Intelligence Agency had "reservations" about its inclusion.
The paper said its information came from senior Whitehall sources.
US administration officials have criticised the inclusion of a reference to the nuclear claim and the nation in President George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union Address, and pointed out that it had not been corroborated by Washington's intelligence network.
CIA chief George Tenet, who took the blame for Bush's discredited prewar claim, came under fire again Sunday with a leading Republican senator suggesting he resign.
The Financial Times said it had learnt the original information on the nuclear claim came from two west European countries, and not from now discredited documents that proved to be forgeries.
The financial daily reported an official saying the information from foreign intelligence services was not shared with the US because it "was not ours to share".
The Italian government on Sunday denied reports that its intelligence services handed the United States and Britain documents indicating that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons programme.
The denial followed a report by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that Rome's SISMI intelligence services had given Washington and London documents in late 2001, showing the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had sought uranium from the African state.
There is considerable doubt in London and Washington over the strength of the US and British case for ending UN arms inspections and launching the March 20 invasion to topple the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Hans Blix, who was the UN weapons chief inspector in Iraq in the run-up to war, added to the criticism, telling The Independent on Sunday that Britain had "over-interpreted the intelligence they had."
The Daily Telegraph reported that "US intelligence sources believe that the most likely source of the MI6 intelligence was the French secret service, the DGSE. Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are run by a french company that comes under the control of the French atomic energy commission."
The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" information showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, the Telegraph reported.
A third British newspaper, The Guardian, cited government officials saying the nuclear claim came from a "close ally" but one which didn't want Britain to give it to the US as a further pretext for war.
"It has become an enormously overblown issue," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN.
"The president of the United States did not go to war because of the question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought the uranium in Africa," she said.
Earlier, on Fox News Sunday, she dismissed the notion as "ludicrous."
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