NIGER & YELLOW CAKE

Saddam's Man in Niger
By Christopher Hitchens

"LET US CREDIT the Senate Intelligence Committee with almost getting the name right. On pages 25-26 of its latest report appears the following:

The head of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program, Ja'far Diya' Ja'far, stated that after 1998, Iraq had two contacts with Niger and neither was regarding uranium. In 1999, Iraq's ambassador to the Holy See, Wissam Zahawie, traveled to Niger to invite the President of Niger to visit Iraq and, in 2001, a Nigerien minister visited Iraq to discuss purchasing petroleum. The ISG [Iraq Survey Group] recovered a draft contract between Niger and Iraq supporting the purchase of crude oil by Niger in exchange for cash.

And, on page 54 we read, under the heading "Conclusions":

Iraq had two contacts with Niger after 1998, but neither involved the purchase of uranium. The purpose of a visit to Niger by the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Wissam al-Zahawie, was to invite the president of Niger to visit Iraq. The other visit involved discussions of a Nigerien oil purchase from Iraq.

...

"When I first heard that it was Zahawie who had been to Niger," he told me, "I thought well, then, that's it. Conclusive." I asked him if he would put his reasons in writing, and here they are:
One of my colleagues remembers Zahawie as Iraq's delegate to the IAEA General Conference during the years 1982-84. One item on the agenda was the diplomatic and political fall-out of Israel's destruction of the Osirak reactor (a centerpiece of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions). . . . He was the under-secretary of the foreign ministry selected by Baghdad to represent Iraq on the most sensitive issue, the question of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions. His participation as leader of the Iraqi delegation to the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference merely confirms his standing as Iraq's top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues.

In other words, Zahawie was no ordinary diplomat, and his background was well known to those who study these things. (In a correspondence with Zahawie elicited by what I wrote about him in Slate, he has confirmed to me his participation in those nuclear-related conferences.)

..."

Pertinent Links:

1) Saddam's Man in Niger