Blair still Defends Iraq Uranium Claim

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, July 17, 2003

Blair still Defends Iraq Uranium Claim

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday continued to defend his government's controversial claim that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger, saying it was "not beyond the bounds of possibility."

Speaking to the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament,Blair said he stood entirely by the claim that was made in a dossier published last September on Iraq's alleged weapons of massdestruction.

"The intelligence on which we based this was not the so-called forged documents that have been put to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the IAEA have accepted that they got no such forged documents from British intelligence," Blair told the lawmakers.

"We have independent intelligence to that effect," Blair stressed.

"And secondly, it may just be worth pointing out to the house and also to the public, it's not as if this link between Niger andIraq was some invention of the CIA or Britain. We know (that) in the 1980s that Iraq purchased from Niger over 270 tons of uranium,and therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Let's atleast put it like this, that they went back to Niger again," Blairargued.

Blair, who is grappling with claims that his office exaggeratedthe threat from Iraq in order to make a stronger case for the Iraqwar, has been under new pressure after United States President George W. Bush and the CIA have sought to distance themselves fromthe uranium claim.

CIA Director George Tenet has admitted he made a mistake when he allowed Bush to make the allegation in his January speech against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which was proved tobe based on forged documents.

Blair's comments came one day after the Commons Foreign AffairsCommittee wrote to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw with a detailed list of questions about the uranium allegation. It reportedly urged the government to tell truth behind the claim, asthe row over whether Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger rumbles on.

The committee has been investigating the government's handling of intelligence over Iraq's banned weapons during the run-up to the US-led war against Iraq, which Britain joined.

Although it said in a report published at the beginning of thismonth that Blair's Office did not mislead the public and the parliament over intelligence on Iraq, the committee concluded thatthe "jury is still out" on Iraq's banned weapons.

Critics have accused the Bush administration and Blair's officeof misleading the public by exaggerating the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Iraq.

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