WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) -- A U.S. House of Representatives committee renewed calls for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify on claims Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Niger.
In a follow-up to a letter sent late last month, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman sent a second letter on Monday reiterating the request that Rice appear before the committee on April 18.
Chairman Waxman initially sent a letter to the State Department on March 30 requesting that Rice attend a hearing to examine pre-Iraq war intelligence, including the claim that Iraq sought uranium in Niger.
Jeffery Berger, assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department, sent a four-page response to the committee's letter, which described the correspondence between Waxman, then ranking member of the committee, and various Bush administration officials in 2003. Berger's letter did not offer any new information regarding the Iraq-Niger controversy, nor did it confirm that Rice would testify on April 18.
Waxman's letter dated April 9 stated that "Mr. Bergner's letter does not answer many of the committee's questions, nor does it provide most of the information and documents the committee requested." Therefore, the committee's request for Rice to appear still stands, Waxman said.
During his State of the Union speech in January 2003, President Bush said that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," citing British intelligence.
The Bush administration later dropped the allegation. Reports after the speech indicated that U.S. intelligence was split over the authenticity of the claim even as the president publicly spoke.
