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Italy warned U.S. on Iraq war intelligence

John Hooper

Rome: Italian intelligence warned the U.S. about bogus information on Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions at about the time U.S. President George W. Bush cited them as a crucial reason for invading Iraq, an Italian parliamentarian said on Thursday.

Massimo Brutti of the Opposition Left Democrats made his claim to reporters after listening to evidence from Italy's chief spymaster, General Nicolo Pollari, in the latest episode to undermine the motivations for the Iraq war. The Italian Government of Silvio Berlusconi was and remains a key ally of the Bush administration.

Italian intelligence has been linked to a dossier alleged to have been forged by an Italian that purported to show that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.

In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Mr. Bush repeated a similar claim to bolster his case for war. ``At about the same as the State of the Union address,'' Mr. Brutti told reporters after listening to Gen. Pollari's evidence, the Italian intelligence services ``said that the dossier did not correspond to the truth.''

Gen. Pollari was testifying to Parliament's intelligence oversight committee about the alleged involvement in the dossier of the Sismi secret services that he leads.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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