Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Two Middle East television stations have broadcast what they say is a new audio tape by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In the tape, broadcast Tuesday by Al-Jazeera and Lebanon's Al-Hayat, a voice said to be Saddam Hussein's appeals to Iraqis, Arabs, Kurds and Turks to expel what it calls the "foreign aggressor invaders" from Iraq.

Al-Jazeera broadcast a Saddam Hussein tape last week that U.S. analysts say was probably authentic. But an Al-Jazeera producer is quoted by the Associated Press as saying today's tape is new. The producer did not say how or when the tape was received.

Meanwhile, the White House has acknowledged for the first time that President George W. Bush should not have used a national address to claim that Iraq once sought to buy uranium in Africa. Mr. Bush made the claim in his State of the Union address in January, in reference to alleged Iraqi efforts to build weapons of mass destruction.

A statement released by a senior administration official late Monday effectively concedes that intelligence underlying the president's claim was wrong. The statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report that raised questions about the reliability of British intelligence Mr. Bush cited in his speech.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog body, dismissed British intelligence reports on the subject as being based on forged documents.Both the U.S. and British governments are facing questions about their handling of intelligence leading up to the war against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in March.

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.