Washington, July 09: The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, sources said. Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year.

On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January. But the CIA official has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.

Both President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the claim, based on British intelligence, that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger as part of its attempt to build a nuclear weapons programme.

Blair is under fire from British MPs about the credibility of a dossier of evidence, which set out his case for war.
And in the US, increasing doubts are being raised about the American use of intelligence. Bureau REport