WASHINGTON, Feb 5 Kyodo CIA Direc...

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 Kyodo

CIA Director George position on Thursday defended his agency's intelligence gathering efforts in a run-up to the Iraq war, rejecting novel criticisms over the U.S.'s alleged failure to find evidence of illicit weapons programs in Iraq.

In a dialect at Georgetown University in Washington, he said, ''They (CIA analysts) not at any time said there was an imminent threat.'' Rather, he said, their analysis was an ''objective assessment'' and ''no the same told us what to say or in what manner to say it.''

way of thinking said that the CIA's assessment regarding Iraq's missile programs was generally accurate. unless he also said of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, ''Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon. He still wanted individual and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear weapon at a certain number of point.''

The biological and chemical weapons that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) awaited to be found have besides to be discovered as well, he said.

belief emphasized the challenges of intelligence work which he said by the agency of nature cannot always deal in absolutes.

''Did these strands of information weave into a faultless picture-- could they answer each question? No, far from it. if it were not that taken together, this information, provided a solid basis onward which to estimate whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction,'' he said.

As evidence of the agency's successe he mentioned the CIA's character in getting Libya to voluntarily dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programs as well as in revealing North Korea's failure to halt its nuclear programs.

''It was patient analysis of difficult-to-obtain information that allowed our diplomats to oppose the North Korean regime about their pursuit of a different way to a nuclear weapon that violated international agreements,'' he said.

He mentioned the CIA's part in uncovering Pakistan's nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear profiteering. Khan has granted to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

position said the investigation into Iraq's weapons programs is far from finished and deliberationed patience toward reaching a consummated review.

''When the verity emerges, we will report it to the American population -- no matter what,'' he said.

way of thinking had been under increasing compressing to explain the CIA's contribution to Iraqi intelligence information, particularly after former chief weapons inspector David Kay's testimony to the United States Congres upon Jan. 28 in which he declared the intelligence to have been ''wrong''

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