Crude Fakes

A few hours and a simple Internet search was all it took for UN inspectors to realise documents backing US and British claims that Iraq had ...

A few hours and a simple Internet search was all it took for UN inspectors to realise documents backing US and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear programme were crude fakes, a UN official said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the UN nuclear agency who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tonnes of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his 8216;8216;jaw dropped8217;8217;.

8216;8216;When UN experts started to look at them, after a few hours of going at it with a critical eye things started to pop out,8217;8217; the official said, adding a more thorough investigation used up 8216;8216;resources, time and energy we could have devoted elsewhere8217;8217;.

The US first made the allegation that Iraq had revived its nuclear programme last fall when the CIA warned that Baghdad 8216;8216;could make a nuclear weapon within a year8217;8217; if it acquired uranium. President Bush found the proof credible enough to add it to his State of the Union speech in January.

The International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA official said the charge Iraq sought the uranium was to be the 8216;8216;stake in the heart8217;8217; of Baghdad and 8216;8216;would have been as close to a smoking gun as you could get8217;8217; because Iraq could only want it for weapons.

Once the IAEA got the documents, French nuclear scientist Jacques Bautes, head of the UN Iraq Nuclear Verification office, quickly saw they were fakes. Two documents were particularly bad. The first was a letter from the President of Niger which referred to his authority under the 1965 Constitution. That constitution has been defunct for nearly four years, the official said.

There were other problems with the letter, including an unsuccessful forgery of the President8217;s signature. 8216;8216;It doesn8217;t even look close to the signature of the President. I8217;m not a handwriting expert but when I looked at it my jaw dropped,8217;8217; the official said. Another letter about uranium dated October 2000 purportedly came from Niger8217;s foreign minister and was signed by Alle Elhadj Habibou, who has not been foreign minister since 1989. The letterhead was also out of date and referred to Niger8217;s 8216;8216;Supreme Military Council8217;8217; from the pre-1999 era 8212; which would be like calling Russia the Soviet Union.

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After determining the documents were fakes, the IAEA had a group of international forensics experts 8212; including people from the US and Britain 8212; verify their findings. The panel unanimously agreed with the IAEA.

The IAEA asked the US and Britain if they had any other evidence backing the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium. The answer was no.

IAEA chief Mohamed Elbaradei informed the UN Security Council in early March that the Niger proof was fake and that three months with 218 inspections at 141 sites had produced 8216;8216;no evidence or plausible indication8217;8217; Iraq had a nuclear programme. Reuters