There is, however, a key difference: Tony Blair is nearing the legislated end to his reign next year, and George W. Bush will be fighting for re-election in 2004. Will the scandal die with Tony Blair in Britain? Will the Democrats seize the opportunity to expose a conspiracy of the highest order in an attempt to dethrone Herr Bush? This will be a mere political gurgle until the campaigning begins in earnest next year.

-Ian.

——- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=7&u=/nm/ 20030711/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_dc

White House Ignored CIA Over Iraq Uranium Claim-CBS

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House ignored a request by the CIA ( news -web sites ) to remove a statement in President Bush ( news -web sites )’s State of the Union address that Iraq ( news -web sites ) was seeking uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons program, CBS Evening News reported on Thursday.

The White House acknowledged this week it had been a mistake to put the claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa in Bush’s January speech and that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged.

Critics have seized on the statement as a prime example of the Bush administration’s campaign to mislead the public by hyping the threat posed by Iraq to gain support for the war.

The CIA checked the parts Bush’s speech dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction for accuracy and CIA officials warned White House National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not strong enough to flatly state that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, CBS News said.

White House officials argued that since a paper issued by the British government contained the assertion, if it was attributed to Britain it would be factually accurate, CBS said. CIA officials dropped their objections, CBS said.

A CIA spokesman declined comment on the CBS report, which was sourced to senior Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a related development, the CIA told British intelligence last year that the American intelligence agency did not have high confidence in reports that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Africa, a U.S. official told Reuters.

“We had concerns about the veracity of the story and we shared those concerns with them but in the end they thought that their information was solid and they went with it,” the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

DOCUMENTS FORGED

British intelligence decided the information they had was solid and included it in a report issued in September 2002, the official said.

The CIA shared its concerns shortly before the British report was issued and before the American intelligence agency had seen the Niger documents, which now have been determined to be forgeries.

“We had no idea they were forgeries, we didn’t get the documents until much later,” the U.S. official said. “We weren’t sure it was true, didn’t have high confidence of it being accurate for a variety of reasons,” the official said.

The Washington Post first reported the CIA’s unsuccessful effort to persuade Britain to drop the Iraq uranium claim. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States, the newspaper reported.

Bush delivered the following line in his State of the Union speech in January: “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein ( news -web sites ) had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The Italian intelligence service circulated reports about the Niger documents — not the documents themselves — to other Western intelligence services in early 2002, and that was apparently how the British and U.S. intelligence services learned of them, U.S. government sources have said.

Since invading U.S. forces ousted Saddam from power in April, no biological or chemical weapons have been found, nor evidence that Iraq and restarted its nuclear weapons program.

Company ethics? They’re not our business

Today The Observer introduces a new series to monitor one of the crucial issues facing business today. Here Nick Mathiason argues that while marketing departments have been busy adding a green sheen to keep consumers on board, the concept of corporate social responsibility has rarely been paid more than lip service

Sunday November 17, 2002 The Observer

The image of Greenpeace activists occupying the Brent Spar oil platform in 1995 after Shell planned to dump the installation supposedly filled with toxic ADVERTISEMENT waste at the bottom of the sea sparked international uproar. In the same year the oil giant was accused of propping up a tyrannical regime in Nigeria to protect its interests.

Meanwhile, rival BP was accused of collaborating with Colombian rebels in a bid to further its business interests.

Swiss giant Nestlé has never lived down campaigns against it for aggressively marketing formula milk to women in poverty-stricken countries. And powerful drug companies were severely embarrassed last year by their decision to sue the South African government to prevent it manufacturing cheap life-saving drugs to treat its Aids-ravaged population.

These issues and many like them spawned the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

CSR says that companies aren’t just profit-making machines. They have wider responsibilities. They must treat employees with respect, limit damage to the environment and act with integrity to customers.

Now every boardroom lives in fear of being fingered as guilty of bad practice. A whole industry of companies has sprung up advising firms on how to present themselves in a good light.

Slick marketeers are employed to convince us that a computer donated to a school by a supermarket really makes a difference.

Business may try to present itself with a clean, green sheen to engender confidence and avoid consumer boycotts. But, increasingly critics say CSR is dead.

A recent report from think-tank Demos said companies view social responsibility as a PR exercise.

Speaking to The Observer, the head of public affairs for a leading supermarket chain admitted: ‘We have to be seen to be doing it,’ he said. This could be CSR’s epitaph.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Public Policy Research controversially revealed only four out of 10 company boards discuss social and environmental issues, routinely or occasionally. And only a third of organisations have a board member with an environmental remit, and a fifth have one with an interest in social issues.

Last week, the final blow fell. After six years of promises, New Labour caved in to lobbying from industry leaders and dropped plans for a corporate killing bill.

‘Some level of government will have perceived how this offence will play with business,’ said David Bergman of the Centre for Corporate Accountability, which has campaigned for legislation.

What campaigners from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – mainly charities and campaign groups – are furious about is that companies trumpet token projects in public but lobby Governments to retain favourable trade terms.

‘The Bush administration preaches free trade especially when offering advice to developing countries,’ said Oxfam’s Kevin Watkins. ‘But under the 2002 Farm Act it increased subsidies by around 10 per cent to $20 billion a year. These subsidies are devastating poor countries.’

Watkins argues the Farm Act and ‘the sordid deal’ struck between France and Germany to retain Europe’s protection barrier – the Common Agricultural Policy – at current levels until 2013 amounts to a ‘reckless pandering to the big farm lobby’.

Likewise with an eye to its garment industry, the US has failed to lift import quotas on textiles from developing countries. It’s the same story in Europe.

The independent Commission on Intellectual Property set up by the British government said there is evidence that patent protection by international drug companies is driving up the costs of basic medicines.

Dave Timms of the campaign group World Development Movement said: ‘Business may present a cuddly face but international corporations avoid paying corpo ration tax, the world’s poor still die for lack of drugs and clean water and the earth is still sucked dry of resources.

‘Business isn’t wholly responsible for every global crisis. But it is almost always at the scene of the crime.’

Set against the massive life or death issues in which business is involved, CSR seems inadequate. Partnerships between NGOs and business briefly flourished after the 1999 Seattle riots led to World Trade Organisation talks being abandoned.

But CSR was administered what may be the last rites at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg earlier this year. NGOs felt the US government and multinational companies had destroyed the summit’s goal of alleviating global poverty. There was anger at the slow progress on debt relief and increased aid, plus fudges on meeting renewable energy and climate change targets.

The days of partnership between NGOs and business are over. CSR is dead. Welcome to the new campaign age of corporate accountability: demands for binding rules applicable in every country for decent labour and environmental standards.

The battle between big business, government and campaigners is being raised to a new pitch.

Hard to be a saint in the City

‘On current share trends it pays to be socially irresponsible all the way,’ says one City equity analyst of the stellar performance of arms exporters and some oil companies in the current geopolitical tensions.

But other City financiers are taking a more optimistic view about the overall effect of socially responsible investment.

‘It continues to be the fastest growing area of retail investment,’ says Clare Brook, director of socially responsible investment at Morley fund management. Her team moved to Morley two years ago after being offered a chance to work with all the company’s investments, not just a niche ethical fund.

‘We engage with all companies and they appreciate the anticipation of long-term risks from environmental and social policies. We try to get away from the term ethical. What we’re after is sustainable development, which means good performance on the environment and in human rights,’ she says.

Morley has incorporated socially responsible investment into its company-wide voting policy. ‘We vote against any company in the FTSE that hasn’t issued an environmental report or a FTSE 250 company in a high risk sector. A year ago only a third of FTSE issued environmental impact reports, now 2/3 do. We think our voting policy has been instrumental in this.’

Since July 2000 all UK pension funds have been required by law to include a statement on what their social and environmental investment policy is. Individual companies have been lacklustre in voluntarily reporting their environmental impact. About 80 companies in Britain’s largest 350 companies issued environmental reports in the last year.

Trucost are among a raft of companies hoping to fill the gap. It takes basic information from a company’s published reports and costs carbon usage, water pollution and other ‘negative externalities’ that result from business, but which are normally assumed to be free. The end result is an environmental cost expressed in monetary terms. The next step is to get more specific information on the detail of a company’s operation. Each company’s environmental score is publicly available, the reports behind the score are for the company alone.

Morley scores the FTSE 100 companies with a credit ratings agency style A1 to E5 score.

Now there are signs that investment banks are warming to social and environmentally friendly investment. HSBC and Dresdner Bank have made the running in this area in Europe.

‘Business can either change the way it operates or it faces incredible challenges,’ says Morley’s Brook.

Corporate social responsibility code

· Don’t abuse your workforce.

· Don’t cause unnecessary damage to the environment.

· Ensure members of your supply chain are well-treated.

· Treat your customers with respect.

· Don’t do business with oppressive regimes.

· Don’t let patent protection prevent your products being used in cases of national emergency.

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Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill Thursday November 14, 2002 The Guardian

President George Bush is seen by a third of Britons as a bigger threat to world safety than Saddam Hussein, according to a new poll conducted by a senior US Republican and due to be broadcast today.

But most of those questioned by the polling organisation You.Gov say they remain open minded, and ready to be convinced about the justification for an attack on Iraq.

The weighted poll of 3,200 people throughout the country was conducted for Channel 4 by Robert Lunz, a senior Republican strategist, based on the You.Gov sample.

Similar polling has been undertaken by Downing Street as it contemplates how to sell a war on Iraq.

The Channel 4 poll found that a third of the British public have no trust at all in Mr Bush, and many actually fear him. In a straight choice between Mr Bush and President Saddam as to who poses the greater threat to world peace, 32% said Mr Bush and 49% said President Saddam. Almost half see Mr Blair as Mr Bush’s lapdog, with the figure even higher among the under-30s.

Almost two-thirds of people said the only reason the US has targeted President Saddam is because he threatens US control of the Middle East – only a quarter feel it is because the Iraqi leader is a threat to world peace.

Blame for British casualties in a war with Iraq will be placed with Mr Blair himself, according to 21% of those polled.

Commenting on his findings, Mr Lunz said: “I would suggest that [Mr Blair] ring up the broadcast media and say, ‘Keep President Bush, keep Dick Cheney, keep all Americans with these American accents off television’, because it’s not helping his case.”

Despite the poll findings, the British government refused to tone down the bellicose rhetoric. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday warned President Saddam that he will face confrontation if he fails to disclose a full list of the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Having accepted last Friday’s UN resolution, the next hurdle for Iraq will be to provide the list by December 8.

In a speech in London yesterday, Mr Straw said: “The message for Saddam Hussein is this: resolve this crisis peacefully by complying fully with UN inspectors and providing a full and complete disclosure of your WMD [weapons of mass destruction] holdings by 8 December, or choose confrontation.”

Iraq could claim in its declaration that it has some of the components to make weapons of mass destruction but has not actually made them.

But Mr Straw said: “The history of UN weapons inspections in Iraq is littered with examples of deceit, evasion, intimidation and harassment. I hope even Iraq will recognise the consequences of any repeat. If Saddam fails to cooperate fully, then he faces force.”

Mr Straw used the speech to announce that the Foreign Office is to embark on a fundamental review of foreign policy. This is to take account of relations with the Muslim world, weapons of mass destruction and other issues pushed to the forefront by the September 11 attacks. The results of the review are scheduled to be published early next year.

Mr Straw said the aim of the review was to establish long-term strategic priorities. He said it would have four central planks: tackling the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; European security, especially the establishment of stronger ties with Russia; strengthening international organisations, such as the UN, and global economic development.

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