WASHINGTON, March 5: Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy called on Friday on CIA Director George Tenet to state plainly whether he believed the White House altered or misused intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The veteran Massachusetts lawmaker said Mr Tenet also must explain "why he waited until last month - nearly a year after the war started - to set the record straight" that the intelligence did not indicate Iraq posed the immediate threat depicted by the Bush administration.

"Why wasn't CIA Director Tenet correcting the president and the vice president and the secretary of defence a year ago, when it could have made a difference, when it could have prevented a needless war and saved so many lives?" Mr Kennedy asked in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Edward Kennedy is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is scheduled to grill Mr Tenet on intelligence leading up to the invasion at a hearing next week.

"If he feels that the White House altered the facts, or misused the intelligence, or ignored it and relied on dubious sources in the Iraqi exile community, Tenet should say so, and say it plainly," the senator said.

Citing a speech George Tenet gave last month, Mr Kennedy said the CIA director "clearly distanced himself from the administration's statements about the urgency of the threat from Iraq." But the senator said Mr Tenet "stopped short of saying the administration distorted the intelligence or relied on other sources to make the case for war". He also questioned whether Mr Tenet ever tried to urge White House policymakers "to cool their overheated rhetoric" about Iraq's WMDs.

Mr Kennedy, who has taken a high-profile role in the presidential campaign of Sen John Kerry, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat, also tore into President George Bush for exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq for political gain.

"The only imminent threat was the November congressional election. The politics of the election trumped the stubborn facts," he said of the Nov 2002 elections. -Reuters