"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by intelligence services. It was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime," Bush said.

"My government took the appropriate response to the dangers, and as a result the world is more secure and more peaceful."

The US leader was speaking in Uganda, after talks with President Yoweri Museveni, on the fourth stop of a five-country tour in Africa.

As a reporter tried to ask Bush a follow-up question, Museveni hurriedly waved the press away.

Bush's statement came as his administration struggled to douse a political firestorm over the allegations contained in the speech, which the White House admitted early this week overstated Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

The US charge against Iraq stemmed from forged documents alleging that the former Baghdad regime had sought uranium "yellowcake" from Niger, and from separate information that Saddam had also sought the radioactive material from other African nations.

Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday in Pretoria, South Africa firmly denied that Bush had deceived Americans during the speech to Congress in January.

He called the drama over the flawed data "overdrawn, overblown, overwrought," and denied that the administration was guilty of "cooking the books" by hyping intelligence to justify the war.

Powell admitted, however, that by the time he gave a key presentation to the United Nations Security Council only a week after Bush's address, the Africa uranium connection was regarded as unreliable.

In revelations further fanning the crisis, the Washington Post reported on Friday that the CIA believed as far back as last September that there were problems with the claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa.

The paper said the CIA had tried to persuade the British government to drop the claim from an official intelligence paper.

"We consulted about the paper and recommended against using that material," the newspaper quoted a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence program as saying.

But the British government rejected the US suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States, according to the report.

The Post said that at that time, the CIA was completing its own classified national intelligence estimate on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Although the CIA report mentioned alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from three African countries, it warned that State Department analysts were questioning its accuracy when it came to Niger and that CIA personnel considered reports on other African countries to be "sketchy," the paper said.

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