WASHINGTON, Nov 3: President George Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, admitted on Wednesday meeting Italy’s top spy in 2002, but said they did not discuss uranium, as speculation mounted on the source of fake documents that supported the US decision to invade Iraq.

Mr Hadley told a press briefing that he had briefly met the head of Italy’s SISMI secret intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, on Sept 9, 2002, in a ‘courtesy call’ aimed at getting to know his new colleague.

“There was a meeting in Washington on that date. I did attend a meeting with him,” Mr Hadley said in response to a question about a report published last week in the Italian centre-left newspaper La Repubblica, which disclosed the meeting.

“It was, so far as we can tell from our records, about less than 15 minutes. It was a courtesy call. Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed. And that’s also my recollection,” he said.

At the time of the meeting, Mr Hadley was the deputy of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. He later succeeded Ms Rice after she became secretary of state.

According to an investigation published last week by La Repubblicca and denied by the Italian government, Italy provided false documentation to its US allies, who were at the time seeking a ‘smoking gun’ in Iraq.

The documentation purported to show that Saddam Hussein’s government had sought to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.

The information was used by Washington to justify the invasion of Iraq, notably by Mr Bush in his State of the Union address in late January that year.

The case, dubbed ‘Nigergate’ by the Italian media, is linked to a CIA leak investigation that led to the indictment last week of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, chief of staff I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.—AFP