PRESS RELEASE

8 July 2003

White House Backs off Claim on Iraq and Uranium

Richard Ottaway, Conservative MP for Croydon South and member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has questioned the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons on the report in today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/) which states:-

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. The statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report, which raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program were a threat to U.S. security. (Washington Post Tuesday 8th July)

Richard Ottaway says:-

"This development since the publication of the Foreign Affairs Committee Report casts grave doubt on the validity of the assertion in the September dossier Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction that "uranium has been sought from Africa that has no civil nuclear application in Iraq"".

"At Foreign Affairs Questions today I suggested to the Foreign Secretary that in the light of this development the assertion should not have been made. The Foreign Secretary declined to comment one way or another. It is now imperative that the Government quickly explains whether or not it still stands by this assertion."

"Given that there were nine main conclusions in support of the case for war, the two key ones - uranium and the 45 minutes - now have serious questions against them. It is clear that the Government still has not made the case for war"

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