WASHINGTON, April 2: President George Bush on Saturday acknowledged the need for basic changes in US intelligence services and urged Congress to confirm John Negroponte as director of National Intelligence. Commenting on an independent inquiry commission’s findings released this week, Mr Bush said its recommendations were “thoughtful and extremely significant, and their central conclusion is one that I share: America’s intelligence community needs fundamental change to enable us to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century”.

The commission said the United States had been “dead wrong” in its claims made prior to the invasion of Iraq that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.

“The commission’s report delivers a sharp critique of the way intelligence has been collected and analysed against some of the most difficult intelligence targets, like Iraq,” said Mr Bush in a radio address.

“To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed, and build on what the commission calls solid intelligence successes.”

Mr Bush cited the “uncovering of Libya’s nuclear and missile programs”. “In Pakistan, our intelligence helped expose and shut down the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferation network,” said Mr Bush. “We need to learn from the successes we’ve had, and apply the lessons elsewhere.”

“My administration has already taken steps consistent with the commission’s recommendations. In February I nominated John Negroponte to be our first Director of National Intelligence. This post was created to ensure that our intelligence community works as a single, unified enterprise.

“When members of Congress return to Washington, I urge them to move quickly on his confirmation because he will have a key role in the continued reform and restructuring of our intelligence capabilities.”

“At a time when we are at war and our margin for error is getting smaller, the consequences of underestimating a threat could be tens of thousands of innocent lives,” Mr Bush added. —AFP