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Rice rebuffs congress on Iraq war subpoena
By Agence France Presse.
04/26/07 "AFP"
-- -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signalled
Thursday that she would not comply with a subpoena to appear
before Congress to testify about discredited assertions on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"This is an issue that has been answered and answered and
answered," Rice said when asked about the subpoena during a
visit to Oslo for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
Rice said her staff had written three letters in the last month
to Democratic congressman Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting
record), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee,
concerning his questions about bogus 2003 White House assertions
that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had sought enriched uranium
from Niger as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons.
President George W. Bush included the claim in his State of the
Union message weeks before launching the March 2003 invasion of
Iraq even though top intelligence officials believed the
allegation to be baseless.
Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser at the time, said
Thursday that she was willing to provide additional information
to Waxman's committee in writing.
But she added that her White House work was covered by the
constitutional principle of executive privilege, a principle
presidents have in the past used to shelter aides from being
forced to testify under oath in Congress.
"If there are further questions that Congressman Waxman has,
then I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter,
because I think that that is the way to continue this dialogue,"
she said.
"This all took place in my role as national security adviser,"
Rice continued.
"There is a separation of powers, and advisers to the president
are, under that constitutional principle, not generally required
to go and testify in Congress," she said.
"I think we have to observe and uphold constitutional
principles," she said, adding: "I think I have more than
answered these questions and answered them directly to
Congressman Waxman."
But Rice stopped short of ruling out an appearance before
Waxman's committee and when asked if she would comply with the
subpoena, her spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We haven't decided
yet."
In announcing the subpoena on Wednesday, Waxman said Rice's
tenure as Bush's top security adviser in the run-up to the Iraq
war gives her unique insights into why the administration
pressed its claim about the Niger uranium link to Saddam
Hussein.
Allegations that Iraq was seeking to build weapons of mass
destruction provided the main justification for the 2003 US-led
invasion of Iraq.
But no such weapons were found and top intelligence officials
have since revealed that the report concerning Iraq's alleged
bid to obtain uranium from Niger had been discounted prior to
Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
The Central Intelligence Agency notably sent a retired diplomat,
Joseph Wilson, to Niger to check on the claims, and he reported
back that they were groundless.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
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