Clinton Reopens Book on Iraqi Bid to Buy Uranium in Africa

Tony Blair's ally and former US president Bill Clinton yesterday reopened the sensitive issue of Saddam Hussein's attempts to buy uranium in Africa.

Speaking on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Clinton, who is promoting his memoirs, said there was "no evidence" the CIA had ever told George Bush about the claim.

Though it has not been stated in the four official inquiries into British intelligence, London's source for its claims about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium - widely repeated in the US until discredited - almost certainly came from French intelligence.

France has much influence in Niger, the west African state in which Iraq allegedly tried to buy the so-called "yellow cake".

A convention between intelligence services allows a provider of data shared with an ally to control further dissemination. British sources say that Paris, in this instance, refused further dissemination, even when the US basis for a similar claim proved to come from crudely forged documents.

The Butler report said "there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached", and that statements in the UK government's dossier and by the prime minister to the commons about Iraqi attempts to buy such ore "were well-founded".

Mr Clinton told Sir David Frost: "Let me just say one other thing. Now this doesn't apply to the UK, it applies to America. There is no evidence that the CIA told the president or the White House that Saddam Hussein had gotten uranium yellow cake from Niger, or was close to having a nuclear weapon, a representation that was made.

"Now the intelligence in the UK may have told Prime Minister Blair but the evidence is to the contrary in America. And there is no evidence that the CIA ever said that Saddam Hussein was tied to al-Qaida and could have had anything to do with September 11 directly or indirectly," he said.

The implication of his remarks was that untrustworthy sources had briefed the White House and other agencies.

The moral, he said, was not to blame the CIA or other agencies for things they had not done or got wrong.