CIA apologises over UK's Iraq claim

Tenet says the CIA made a mistake

A British claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy nuclear material from Africa has led to an unprecedented apology from the director of the CIA.

George Tenet said he made a mistake when he allowed President George W Bush to make the allegation as part his State of the Union address in January.

As preparations for the war against Iraq gathered momentum, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Mr Tenet said those 16 words did not meet the level of certainty required for Presidential speeches and that it had been a mistake to allow them to be included in the address to the American people.

The claim also appeared in a dossier on Iraqi weapons published by the British Government last September.

Downing Street is standing by its claims and says it based what it printed on a source separate to the one causing the Americans concern.

'Clear strategy'

In his statement Mr Tenet said the president's words were factually correct, in the sense that they attributed the claim about Iraqi nuclear ambitions to the British government.

CIA takes blame for Iraq claims Tenet statement Timeline: Uranium row

But he went on to say that was not good enough given the long-held doubts about the accuracy of the UK's information.

The BBC's Washington correspondent Rob Watson said the White House's strategy was clear.

He said it was trying to put an end to an increasingly embarrassing row by assigning the blame to the CIA.

However there are signs that Mr Tenet's admission may not stop the controversy with a majority of Americans now believing that the case for war was exaggerated, our correspondent says.

'Potentially embarrassing'

Following the CIA's admission Donald Anderson, the Labour chairman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said concerns remained over the UK's claims that Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger.

If Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources, Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years UK Government dossier

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is of course potentially embarrassing.

"The nuclear weapons claim was always the least strong of the chemical, biological and nuclear (claims)."

Mr Anderson said that given the close relationship between the British and American intelligence services, it was unlikely the UK had not been told of concerns about the accuracy of the claims.

'Forged documents'

The CIA's admission has opened up a split with Mr Bush's closest ally Tony Blair, BBC News Online's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds says.

Last September's dossier said: "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa.

"If Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources, Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years."

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has since said that claim was based on documents which had been forged.

The documents were supposed to be faxes of agreements between Niger and Iraq. Who forged them is not known.

On Saturday, Richard Butler, the Australian former chief UN weapons inspector said the claim was false and the Australian ministers who repeated it should resign.

BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan said the UK Government was continuing to stand by its claim.

He said: "They say they put this claim in the dossier and they continue to stand by it because it's not unreliable, it's not based on those forged documents, it's based on something else."