WASHINGTON, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The White House has acknowledged for the first time that United States President George W. Bush should not have alleged that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

　　The White House statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report, which raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence.

　　The British panel said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a "bald claim" that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa.

　　The findings undercut one of the Bush administration's main defenses for including the allegation in Bush's State of Union speech in January -- namely that despite the CIA's questions about the assertion, British intelligence was still maintaining that Iraq had indeed sought to buy uranium in Africa.

　　Asked about the British report, the Bush administration released a statement that, after weeks of questions about the president's uranium-purchase assertion, effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's statement was wrong.

　　"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," a senior Bush administration official said Monday night in a statement authorized by the White House.

　　The statement capped months of turmoil over the uranium episode during which senior officials have been forced to defend the president's remarks in the face of growing reports that they were based on faulty intelligence.

　　As part of his case against Iraq, 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 -- which centered on documents alleging Iraqi efforts to buy the material from Niger -- was based on forged documents. End