In a surprise statement Friday, CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for inclusion in Bush's January 28 State of the Union Address of an erroneous allegation that Iraq sought to buy nuclear materials in Africa.

Tenet's statement echoed what the White House had been saying for the past week -- that Bush made the claim in good faith after the information had been cleared by intelligence agencies.

The sentence in the speech that was eventually discredited was: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

"These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," said Tenet.

"The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound."

"I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," Tenet said, although he never said outright that he had personally read the president's speech before it was delivered.

In Abuja, Nigeria, Saturday, Bush said he had "confidence" in Tenet as he met Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on the final leg of his five-nation African tour.

Earlier presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer had also insisted that Bush still had confidence in Tenet and the CIA and told reporters that the president considered the matter closed.

"The president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well," Fleischer told reporters during a tour of the National Hospital in Abuja.

For The New York Times, however, Tenet's move raised as many question as it answered.

"Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do," a Times editorial said.

Questions about the uranium allegation resurfaced last weekend on the eve of Bush's trip to Africa and with the printing in the Times of an opinion piece by a US diplomat sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate a report that it had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq.

The diplomat reported back his conclusion that "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place" and went on to conclude: "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

A poll released Saturday by the Washington Post newspaper and US television network ABC showed Bush's popularity taking a battering.

More than half of those polled said that the number of US troops being killed and injured daily in Iraq was unacceptable, while Bush's personal approval rating fell from 68 percent three weeks ago to 59.

Fully 50 percent of polled Americans said they thought the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." Forty-six percent thought it did not.

Questions over the drama dogged Bush on his Africa trip. As aides struggled to contain the growing political storm, Bush insisted the CIA had cleared the speech delivered to Congress in January as the administration laid down the rationale for war to disarm Saddam Hussein.

Bush's national Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told reporters that the address was sent to Tenet for approval.

"Now I can tell you, if the CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone, without question," she told reporters on Air Force One.

Senior administration officials said that before Rice spoke with the press, she phoned Tenet in Washington but gave no details of the call.

WAR.WIRE