Iraq WMD forgery gets Venice art spotlight

VENICE, June 10 (Reuters) Can bad intelligence make for good art? Well, the art elite gathered in Venice are rolling out the red carpet for German artist Thomas Demand's tribute to bogus pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

Hanging from one of the buildings in the lagoon city is a massive image by Demand portraying the Niger embassy in Rome -- a suspected origin of forged documents claiming Saddam Hussein had sought uranium for a weapons programme from Niger.

This was the same claim US President George W Bush cited in his State of the Union address in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Those infamous ''16 words'' of his address were later retracted.

''What interested me is that this whole thing starts with a fake, which is even a bad fake, but it develops into something more,'' said Demand, who unveiled his series of images on the Niger embassy on Thursday.

''The fake becomes something which has a real impact, a real consequence.'' To underline the duplicitous nature of the use of intelligence the images of the Niger embassy are actually the result of a full-sized model that he meticulously reconstructed -- using cardboard -- and not of the real building.

The artist put the images in an exhibition in Venice hosted by the Fondazione Prada launched at the same time the art world gathers in Venice for the Biennale art festival.

The dossier itself was hardly a forgery masterpiece, filled with basic mistakes like citing a foreign minister of Niger who had already left the post.

But the documents, and the Italian freelance spy who tried to peddle them to Western intelligence agencies, have been the subject of lengthy investigative reports on both sides of Atlantic trying to unravel pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

Given the unwanted attention the dossier had drawn, the Niger embassy initially declined Demand's request for access.

But Demand said the embassy eventually agreed, after months of insistence, to speak with him. He said they told him the embassy had done nothing wrong.

Investigative newspaper reports in Italy also point to a break-in at the Niger embassy in 2001, when stationery and official seals were stolen.

''Paper has been stolen. blank paper. All of my work has been based on paper,'' Demand said, explaining his motivations.

The embassy declined comment on Demand's exhibition.

REUTERS SLD RK2000