Pizzas galore!

“Martino told me that if he was able to obtain a copy of a contract then he would have earned a lot of money from an unspecified ‘intelligence’ organisation,” she told the magistrate.

()The lure of the money was apparently too much. “She was [the ambassador’s] trusted personal assistant. The consul Zakariaou . . . needed money. He would help her forge the documents,” the Nato sources claim.

Martino passed the contract to his French handlers, but they spotted it was a fake and refused to pay.

Some time in 2002, however, they obtained another apparently incriminating document, the source said. This was a letter purporting to be from al-Zahawie relating to a visit to Niger in 1999 to discuss the possible supply of uranium. This did not constitute evidence that Niger had agreed to supply yellowcake but it did indicate Saddam was trying to obtain it.

The letter, deemed “credible” by the Butler inquiry into Iraq intelligence, appears to be the evidence that led to Bush’s claim in January 2003 that the British had “learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.

The French passed copies to MI6 with caveats to protect their source. The British could tell the CIA Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake from Niger but not about the actual letter.

In the autumn of 2002, Martino passed the documents allegedly faked by Zakariaou and Montini to an Italian journalist. She then took them to the American embassy and they were passed on to Washington.

After the IAEA had dismissed the forged documents, the Americans disowned all the Iraq-Niger uranium claims. But the latest allegations are unlikely to end the row.

This springs from the mission of Joseph Wilson, a former American ambassador, who was sent to Niger to check the uranium claims.

Wilson dismissed the possibility of Iraq obtaining uranium and publicly attacked Bush’s claims. The White House retaliated, with officials briefing journalists that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. Naming an undercover agent is illegal in America.

Last week, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former aide to Cheney, told the inquiry into the leak that the vice-president ordered the briefings and that Bush had authorised them.

Zakariaou, now a Niger representative to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, said: “If you really want the truth you must look somewhere else. You should deepen your inquiries elsewhere."

For further Niger coverage see Michael Smith's weblog, www.timesonline.co.uk/mick_smith

DIRTY BOMB FEAR

The United Nations nuclear watchdog has warned of a sharp increase in the smuggling of radioactive material that could be used in a terrorist “dirty bomb”, writes Gareth Walsh.

The number of incidents involving unauthorised movement, possession or loss of radioactive sources doubled from 2002 to 2004, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. About half the cases involved criminal activity.

Security experts fear that terrorists could pack conventional bombs with radioactive material which would contaminate wide areas of cities.

Al-Qaeda has been accused of trying to obtain material in Chechnya for such a dirty bomb to use in Europe or America. Much of the material on the black market comes from radioactive sources used in industry or hospitals.

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