By IRNA
Berlin : Germany’s former ambassador to the UN, Gunter Pleuger accused the US of having used shady information to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Talking to Saturday’s edition of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Pleuger said, “We had strongly warned the Americans of not using dubious information.”
The German secret service knew that some of the US claims were wrong, he added, referring to a speech by then-US secretary of state Colin Powell in the UN on February 5, 2003 making the case for an American-led war in Iraq.
His presentation included satellite photos of trucks that Powell identified as mobile biological weapons laboratories which were in fact nothing more than what used to be red-painted fire engine trucks, Pleuger quoted former UN inspector Hans Blix as saying.
Referring to US allegations about Iraq’s purchase of uranium in the African country of Niger, Pleuger cited the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying that the dossier was from the British intelligence agency and was primitively forged.
He added, for example some of the documents included names of politicians from Niger who had been dead for 10 years ahead.
Pleuger who was Germany’s top diplomat at the UN from 2002 until 2006, said that the US tried to defame those UN ambassadors who had a critical view to towards America’s Iraq policy.
Germany under former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had strongly opposed US war plans, leading to a post-World War II low point in bilateral relations.