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<DIV><A
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967548,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967548,00.html</A></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell,
privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's
banned weapons programme at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to
get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned. </FONT>
<P>Their deep concerns about the intelligence - and about claims being made by
their political bosses, Tony Blair and George Bush - emerged at a private
meeting between the two men shortly before a crucial UN security council session
on February 5.
<P>The meeting took place at the Waldorf hotel in New York, where they discussed
the growing diplomatic crisis. The exchange about the validity of their
respective governments' intelligence reports on Iraq lasted less than 10
minutes, according to a diplomatic source who has read a transcript of the
conversation.....</P>
<P>What are called the "Waldorf transcripts" are being circulated in Nato
diplomatic circles. It is not being revealed how the transcripts came to be
made; however, they appear to have been leaked by diplomats who supported the
war against Iraq even when the evidence about Saddam Hussein's programme of
weapons of mass destruction was fuzzy, and who now believe they were lied to.
...</P>
<P>The Waldorf transcripts are all the more damaging given Mr Powell's dramatic
75-minute speech to the UN security council on February 5, when he presented
declassified satellite images, and communications intercepts of what were
purported to be conversations between Iraqi commanders, and held up a vial that,
he said, could contain anthrax. ......</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>