Niger: Niger's officials are doing surprisingly little to unravel the intrigue over forged papers on Iraq, writes Declan Walsh, who recently visited Niamey
A fan whirrs softly through the heated gloom. On the couch a gold-suited man silently leafs through documents. To one side is a satellite phone, on the other sits the personal secretary of the President of Niger. He shifts uneasily in his seat.
"No, never seen these," says Adamou Chekou with a thin smile, gesturing to the papers. "You can't expect me to comment on things I know nothing about." But Mr Chekou seems uniquely positioned to explain these documents - the ones that helped send the world to war.
In his hands are copies of letters used by Tony Blair and George Bush to prove that Saddam Hussein wanted to build a nuclear bomb. They purport to show that Iraqi officials tried to buy uranium oxide, or "yellow-cake", from Niger four years ago. There is one problem - they are blatant, clumsy fakes.
Mr Bush has accepted full responsibility for falling for the hoax. Mr Blair insists he has "other intelligence" to make the same case, but refuses to say what it is.
But if the deception in this intrigue is clear, the rest is murkiness. Two questions still burn, questions that interest anyone who worries that Britain and the US started a bloody war for nothing: who concocted the fake letters, and why?
Mr Chekou should know something. The fakes originated in Niger's tiny Rome embassy at a time when he was ambassador. But when I arrive at his home - a large air-conditioned house in a suburb of the dusty capital, Niamey - he claims to know nothing.
Travelling with an Italian journalist, at first we are not welcomed. A muscular soldier armed with an Uzi sub-machinegun is sent to the gate to shoo us away. Some time later, President Tandja's secretary Mahaman Ali pulls up. He asks us to leave our cameras outside, and we are ushered in.
Unfortunately, Mr Chekou cannot help much.
"Why get excited about something I don't know? We are like you, we get our information from the radio," he says, as Mr Ali nods sagely.
Curiously, both men say this is the first time the Niger government has seen the papers that thrust them to into the world headlines. They never bothered to obtain copies, or to investigate whether aofficial from Niger might be behind them. We hand over copies downloaded from a local Internet café.
Mr Ali scans them, scoffs at the errors, then cuts the interview short. "Thank you for bringing these to our attention," he says curtly. "We will examine them closely."
The fakes that fooled the world's most powerful leaders are packed with mistakes. Letterheads are mixed up, dates confused, signatures badly forged.
One bears the name of a minister who resigned 11 years earlier. So somebody, somewhere must be laughing. But who? Western intelligence claims an "underpaid African diplomat" sold the forgeries to Italian intelligence for a few thousand dollars. They were also offered to an Italian journalist. The Italians passed the information to MI6, who in turn passed it to the US.
If the spies are telling the truth, another question begs. Did the forger come up with the complex scheme on their own? Or did someone else - perhaps someone with an interest in painting Saddam as a nuclear evil - put them up to it? The Niger government angrily denies charges of involvement. It blames Britain and the US for buying the scam.
"The whole thing is ridiculous," snorted the Minister of Mines and Energy, Rabiou Hassane Yari, during an interview on an aircraft as he returned to Niamey from a trip abroad. "Even if we wanted to, we couldn't have pulled this off." He could think of only one explanation of how they were so foolish. "They wanted to make war. They needed an argument. They found one."
Uranium is responsible for Niger's modest wealth. Prices soared in the 1970s as Western countries scrambled to feed nuclear power plants built in the wake of the oil crisis. Niamey, a one-storey city of mud houses and ramshackle shops, was transformed.
Tall, sandy-coloured buildings and plush business hotels sprouted on the banks of the river Niger. Foreign restaurants flourished. Expatriates flooded in, led by the former colonial power France. The government knew it was on to a good thing. "We will sell our uranium to the devil if we have to," declared then military dictator Seyni Kountche.
These days the boom is long over. Uranium prices have plummeted. While it once brought in 70 per cent of export earnings, now it accounts for about half that amount. According to a French diplomat, uranium sales earned the government just $10 million last year. The main exports now are cowpeas, onions, gum arabic and cattle.
Niamey is a quiet, poverty-stricken backwater. Smooth roads still leave the city, but further out there are more camels than cars. The marble corridors of the top hotel, the Gaweye, ring empty, its most regular customers being the crew of the twice-weekly Air France flight from Paris. And on the streets outside, beggars wheel up to the passing cars at the few traffic lights, their hands outstretched.
Ordinary Nigériens have greeted the glare of publicity with a mix of bemusement and indignation. The spotlight is new to them. Outsiders often confuse Nigériens with their neighbours, the Nigerians. Their country is twice the size of France but mostly uninhabitable desert. Even African hands might hesitate to find it on a map.
And with illiteracy running at 80 per cent, some don't even know that uranium exists.
As dawn spilled over the banks of the Niger, a huddle of goatskin traders sipped tea under a cloud of flies. In the water below them, bare-chested young men rinsed the skins in the chocolate-coloured river waters, blood dripping from their hands.
Soumana Ango, a friendly man with a line of tribal scars across his cheeks, said the skins were destined for Nigeria. From there they might be sent to the West, to make handbags or shoes. But he confessed ignorance of Niger's other major export.
"Uranium? Never heard of if," he answers with a polite smile.
Boureima Abdoulaye was better informed. The uranium was buried in the deserts 800 miles to the north, he said. French companies were in charge. And as far as he could tell, this scandal he heard of on the news was "completely false".
Niger's uranium couldn't be bought and sold like soap or salt or even goatskins. Even he knew that. "It is tightly regulated. There are strict procedures to follow," he said indignantly.
Simple survival, and not intrigues, preoccupies most Nigériens. According to the UN it is the second-poorest country in the world, after Sierra Leone. An appalling set of social indicators have earned this terrible ranking.
Average life expectancy is 46 years. A quarter of all children die before the age of five. Only about one-third make it to school.
So for most people, the potential of the distant uranium mines might as well be on Mars.
On the city's edge, Amadou Garba and his camel wait for the day's heat to pass. At nightfall they would start a two-day trip west, he said, to chop firewood. Back in Niamey it would sell for about 10 US cents a bundle.They might keep the 26-year-old, his wife and two children going for another few weeks. Life offered few other choices.
"Uranium is for the French, not us Nigériens," he shrugged.
The US embassy could not help explain how its government fell for the dud uranium yarn. An interview with the ambassador, or any US official, would not be possible, apologised public information officer Lou Lantner. "I don't think we have anything to add," he said. Such silence seemed unusual. "This whole episode is quite unusual," he replied.
The US knew it was improbable that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq before it went to war. In February 2002 the CIA despatched veteran Africa diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to investigate in Niamey. He concluded: "There's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired."
France effectively runs Niger's uranium industry. The only two mines are run by Cogema, a French state company, and the entire output - currently about 3,000 tonnes a year - is sent to France, Japan and Spain. From mine to port, the shipments are closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Cogema officials say that not one barrel of yellow-cake has gone missing in 40 years of operations.
The controversy annoys Nigériens who believe their country has been used for the deception because of their poverty. "We were an ideal choice. We are weak, poor and cannot defend ourselves easily. It is like a form of collateral damage," said Issoufou Mahamadou, leader of the main opposition party.
But the mystery of the forger and his or her motivations remains. Niger may be annoyed that it has become entangled in the intrigue, but has done surprisingly little to unravel it.
It matters to Niger's good reputation, and it matters to people who care about why the West took the war to Iraq. Perhaps Tony Blair's other proofs, when he produces them, will settle the matter.
Is it a case of a huckster with a keen interest in politics and an eye for easy money? Or do larger powers loom somewhere in the murky waters of international espionage? Maybe, somewhere between Niamey and New York, somebody has the answer. For now, they are saying nothing.