Bush defends 'darn good' Iraq intelligence

President George Bush has defended the quality of intelligence he receives as “darn good”, despite an uproar over disputed reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons.

Bush said yesterday he remained convinced that Saddam Hussein was attempting to develop a weapons programme that threatened the world and justified the United States going to war against Iraq.

“Our country made the right decision,” Bush said.

Bush spoke at the end of an Oval Office meeting with the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

“When all is said and done the people of the United States will realise that Saddam Hussein had a weapons programme,” Bush said.

“I think I get darn good intelligence and the speeches I have given are backed by good intelligence,” Bush said. However, the administration has acknowledged the uncertainty of remarks Bush made in his State of the Union address in January about Iraq’s alleged attempts to buy uranium.

Administration officials say the remark should not have been included in Bush’s speech because it was based on British intelligence that was not confirmed by the United States.

“When I gave the speech the line was relevant,” the president said. He noted that it was cleared by the CIA at the time, although doubts were subsequently raised.

CIA Director George Tenet said last week that his agency was responsible for allowing the claim into the State of the Union address, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer indicated that the White House had no interest in digging deeper into an incident that has embarrassed the administration.

“I think the bottom has been gotten to,” Fleischer said earlier. “No one can accurately tell you it was wrong. That is not known.”

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, said the United States and Britain had intelligence that supported Bush’s contention that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.

At the same time, both also said the intelligence fell short of the elevated standards necessary for a presidential address. They said Tenet had deleted a similar but more narrowly focused assertion from a Bush speech in Cincinnati three months earlier.

According to Fleischer, the reference to uranium in the Cincinnati speech was “very specific to Niger, (while) the language in the State of the Union was very different. ... there was other reporting about other countries beyond Niger”.

Rumsfeld and Rice took identical messages to Sunday’s television talk shows:

::The statement was and remains accurate:

:: It was cleared for delivery by all necessary agencies;

:: It was a minor part of Bush’s State of the Union speech;

:: It is supported by more evidence than documents revealed earlier that were proved to have been forged.

Democrats jumped into the fray, with two presidential contenders questioning the administration’s explanation. Senator Bob Graham said the suggestion that no one in the White House was aware of the weakness of the intelligence claim before the speech “stretches belief”.

Forged documents purported to confirm approaches by Iraq to the West African nation of Niger, the world’s third-largest producer of mined uranium. In the address, Bush said “the British government has learned” of the Iraqi approach, but he did not mention that US agencies had questioned the validity of that intelligence.

Asked on NBC’s Meet the Press to explain why the statement should have been dumped, Mr Rumsfeld said: “Referencing another country’s intelligence, as opposed to your own, probably – according to George Tenet and the president ... it would have been better not to include it.”

Still, “The British stand by their statement,” Rice said on Fox News Sunday. “They have told us that despite the fact that we had apparently some concerns about that report, that they had other sources, and that they stand by the statement.” US officials have been denied access to the additional evidence, she said.

In the four months since the war in Iraq began, US forces have found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.