Iraq Notebook
Rice defends early stance on Iraq arms

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In the run-up to the March 2003 war, Rice said in a television interview in 2002 that the Iraqi president was trying to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes to rebuild his nuclear-weapons program. The tubes, she said, were "only really suited for nuclear-weapons programs."

Rice acknowledged yesterday she was aware of a debate within the U.S. intelligence community about whether the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons. "I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute," Rice told ABC's "This Week."

"The intelligence-community assessment as a whole was that these [tubes] were likely and certainly suitable for, and likely for, his nuclear-weapons program," Rice said. She said the director of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, thought the tubes were for centrifuge parts.

Rice insisted she has no regrets about how the administration portrayed what it thought was a dangerous threat posed by Saddam. "I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade" if action wasn't taken.

Later, on CNN's "Late Edition," Rice said, "If you underestimate the nuclear threat of a tyrant, you make a really big mistake."

A New York Times story published yesterday, and carried in The Seattle Times, quoted four CIA officials and a senior administration official as saying Rice's staff had been told in 2001 that Energy Department experts thought the tubes probably were intended for small artillery rockets, not nuclear weapons.

Rice said she learned of the Energy Department's objections after making her 2002 comments.

During the CNN interview in 2002, Rice said the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear-weapons programs." In bolstering the administration's argument of the threat the nation faced, she said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Italy sticks to denial on ransom for hostages

ROME — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government yesterday again denied it had paid a ransom for the release of two Italian workers held hostage in Iraq.
 
A statement from Berlusconi's office condemned what it called "a ballet of figures and presumed leaks that are so contradictory and unreliable that they are mutually excluding."

Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were seized Sept. 7 and released last Tuesday. Most Italian newspapers and even a member of a coalition party said a ransom was paid.

The denial apparently was prompted by a report in London's Sunday Times that cited an Italian intelligence source as saying the Italians had paid a ransom of about $5 million.