HACE UN PAR de semanas, comenté que los documentos falsificados sobre los intentos de Saddam de comprar uranio en Níger podrían haber sido 'plantados' por un italiano a sueldo de los servicios secretos franceses. El objetivo, cumplido con creces, sería el de desprestigiar ese aspecto del casus belli y dañar la imagen de los proponentes de la intervención, a pesar de que sus afirmaciones se basaban otras pruebas que han quedado confirmadas en las comisiones estadounidense y británica que investigaron la información de sus respectivos servicios de inteligencia sobre este asunto.

Hoy, el Sunday Telegraph lo confirma:

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.

The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".

His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

(via Cori Dauber y Patterico)