WASHINGTON, May 28: Two US Army analysts responsible for providing incorrect information about Iraq’s nuclear programme have received job performance awards, the Washington Post said on Saturday. The report, which does not name the analysts, said they were responsible for the claim that aluminium tubes sought by the Saddam government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets.

Although their information later proved incorrect, the analysts received job performance awards in each of the past three years, the report said. The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and US weaponry, work at the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, one of three US agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush’s commission that investigated US intelligence.

The two analysts concluded that it was highly unlikely that the tubes were for use in Iraq’s rocket arsenal, a finding that bolstered a CIA contention that they were destined for nuclear centrifuges, which was in turn cited by the Bush administration as proof that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.

The problem, according to the commission, which cited the two analysts’ work, is that they did not seek or obtain information available from the Energy Department and elsewhere showing that the tubes were indeed the type used for years as rocket-motor cases by Iraq’s military. The panel said the finding represented a ‘serious lapse in analytic tradecraft’ because the centre’s personnel ‘could and should have conducted a more exhaustive examination of the question’.

Pentagon spokesmen said the awards for the analysts were to recognize their overall contribution on the job over the course of each year. But some current and former officials, including those who called attention to the awards, said the episode shows how the Bush administration has failed to hold people accountable for mistakes on pre-war intelligence.