The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.

Subsequently, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard did a backflip in November 2011 and announced that she would push her party to support uranium sales to India.

After a 10-day trip to Niger, Mr. Wilson concluded that there was "nothing to the story" of the uranium sales, as he later told Senate Intelligence Committee investigators.

He wrote that the C.I.A. had sent him to Africa after Mr. Cheney's office raised questions about possible uranium sales.

SOPaMin is to hold the state's shares in the existing uranium companies and is in charge of engaging in commercial transactions, such as uranium sales.

Analysts believe that Moscow could be angling for new uranium sales in a bid to slow or reverse its slide into poverty.

India has welcomed the move by Australia to end its export ban on uranium sales to New Delhi.

The Senate report stated that Wilson's report actually bolstered, rather than debunked, intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq.

When in early 2002, Cheney and Libby came upon a fresh report about uranium sales, they insistently asked an already dubious C.I.A. to check into it further.

Mayaki interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales, but steered the conversation away from trade because of UN sanctions against Iraq.