US warns Niger to keep quiet on Iraq uranium
AFP, London
The United States has warned Niger to keep out of a row over disputed claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from the west African state, the Sunday Telegraph reported.Quoting senior Niger government officials, the British newspaper said Herman Cohen, a former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington. One official told the Telegraph: "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president ... but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up." The American intervention reflects growing concern about the continuing row over claims that the US and Britain distorted evidence to justify the war against Iraq launched in March, according to the right-wing British weekly. The Telegraph recalled that Hama Hamadou, Niger's prime minister, last week told it that the Niger government had never had discussions with Iraq about uranium, and called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to produce the "evidence" he claims to have to confirm that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. US officials denied that there had been any attempt to "gag" the Niger government, the Telegraph said. But the Niger official said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. "Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive." On a visit to Washington last month, Blair maintained the accuracy of British intelligence on Iraq's alleged purchase of nuclear material from Niger, saying "we know for sure" that it bought 270 tons of the material from the African country in the 1980s. Iraq's attempt to procure nuclear material from Niger has become the focus of a political furore in both the US and Britain after the Central Intelligence Agency publicly acknowledged the allegation should never have been in US President George W Bush's State of the Union address in January. That link was cited as one justification for the US-British invasion of Iraq.
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