Senate report blasts CIA report on Iraq

The report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is still at a preliminary stage, expresses surprise at the amount of circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information used to write key intelligence documents, Republican and Democratic congressional sources told the daily.

The Senate inquiry, which the paper said was similar but less exhaustive than one being completed by the House of Representatives, shifts attention towards the intelligence community and away from White House officials.

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However, the daily said the committee was deeply divided on investigating how the administration of President George W. Bush used the intelligence it was provided with in its public statements about Iraq.

Democratic Senator John Rockefeller told The Washington Post he intended to investigate whether Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

After insisting that Iraq concealed biological, chemical and possibly nuclear weapons posing a threat to the world, the US-led coalition has found no such weapons in Iraq since Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1, despite an ongoing search.

The lack of proof has heaped criticism on the United States and on Britain, its main ally in the Iraq War, as the White House and the CIA point at each other as the source of the faulty intelligence.

Bush on July 30 publicly accepted blame for the use of a now-discredited claim in a speech he gave in January that Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa.