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Washington: The White House on July 14 launched a damage control exercise as it reels from mounting criticism over its use of an erroneous claim that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Africa for its nuclear programme in justifying the war to oust Saddam Hussain.

CIA Director George Tenet on July 11 took responsibility for the now-discredited allegation in the President's State of the Union speech in January, but that did little to calm the political storm over the statement, which has taken a toll on President George Bush's popularity.

"It is ludicrous to suggest that the President of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussain sought uranium from Africa," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said.

"This was part of a very broad case that the President laid out in the State of the Union (speech) and other places," she told the "Fox News Sunday" television programme.

The White House admitted on Tuesday that the remark by Bush, stating that Baghdad had sought "significant quantities of uranium from Africa," overstated Saddam's alleged efforts to obtain uranium for nuclear arms.

In his speech, Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but White House officials on July 14 said the intelligence information backing the statement was not strong enough to include in a major Presidential speech.

The controversy over the statement has sparked a spirited debate in the US over the reasons given by Bush for going to war, as well as over the quality of US intelligence and whether it was manipulated for political purposes.

Agencies