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The US State Department, the first agency of any government to publicly identify Niger as a possible target of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium, admitted yesterday it had erred in naming the African country in a fact sheet released late last year.

"In retrospect, I would have worded it differently," spokesperson Richard Boucher said of the December 19 fact sheet that pointed out omissions in Iraq's prewar declaration to the United Nations on its weapons programmes.

But he defended the inclusion of the general allegation about Baghdad's attempts to buy African uranium, which has ignited a storm of controversy and raised questions about US intelligence on Iraq, saying that at the time it had been a legitimate concern and one that Washington believed Saddam Hussein's government needed to answer.

"It was based on the information available at the time," Boucher said.

"I think that we probably would have put something in there about Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium".

"I probably would not have mentioned the Niger, or might have even worded it differently," he said.

A senior official said the fact sheet in question, would be removed and replaced with a new version indicating that questions have been raised about the allegation.

A columnist for the The Washington Post newspaper earlier yesterday had chided the department for keeping the original document on the website given that the Niger allegation has now been refuted and the CIA had admitted it did not stand up to scrutiny.

The fact sheet specifically pointed out that in its UN declaration Iraq had not answered questions about its alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger.

"The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger," it said.

"Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" When the department first released the fact sheet, it became the first government agency in any country to identify Niger as a country from which Iraq had allegedly sought to purchase "yellowcake" uranium.

Britain - the source of documents indicating that such sales appeared to have taken place - had previously accused Iraq of trying to procure uranium from an unidentified country in Africa but had not named Niger.

US President George W Bush referred to the British information in his January 28 State of the Union address - a move which the White House now says was a mistake.

Secretary of State Colin Powell did not repeat the allegation the next week in a speech to the UN Security Council and in March the head of the UN atomic energy agency told the council that the Niger documents had been forged. - Sapa-AFP.

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