The newspaper said the statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report that raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince Congress that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program was a threat to US security.

Asked about the British report, the administration released a statement that effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's statement was wrong, The Post said

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," the paper quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying.

Bush said in his State of the Union speech on January 28 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The International Atomic Energy Agency told the UN Security Council in March that the uranium story was based on forged documents.

The Central Intelligence Agency had dispatched a former senior diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate the claim and received a report from him saying the allegations were false, according to the paper.

But the administration never made Wilson's mission public, the report said.

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