US, Britain Used Forged Evidence on Iraq’s Nuclear Weapon’s Plan

There are suggestions indicating that evidence the US and Britain used against Iraq on their weapons of mass destruction was forged. Rumors of the forgery have been rapidly spreading as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the FBI on Friday to conduct an investigation into the possibly forged documents.

The stir was brought about on March 7 when Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that the documents that the US and Britain submitted as evidence on Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction were forged or incorrect.

According to AP, the documents on the forgery suspicions were provided to US and British intelligence agencies by a third country. The documents indicated that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, a West African nation with natural resources of uranium.

“Any concerns that the government was involved in the creation of the documents should be allayed”, Rockefeller wrote in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Rockefeller asked why the US and British intelligence agencies didn`t recognize the names and signatures and others as forgeries.

However, Secretary of State Colin Powell emphasized that “the US government had no hand in creating the false documents” on March 13 at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Thursday.

On the latest issue Newsweek magazine reported that the US and Britain are under suspicion of forgery and have shifted responsibility on each other causing tensions between the two allies.

Jung-Ahn Kim credo@donga.com