A US Senate committee on Thursday asked three top Bush administration officials to submit documents on prewar intelligence on Iraq before Friday.

In letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the administration agencies of being slow in providing information for the committee's investigation into intelligence that the administration used to make its case for the Iraq war.

The letters, signed by committee chairman Pat Roberts and vice chairman Jay Rockefeller, set Friday as the deadline to provide documents and schedule interviews.

"We must take whatever steps are necessary to assure our nation that US intelligence is accurate and unbiased," the letters said.

A similar letter was sent to Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet on Wednesday, in which the committee said the CIA "must expedite our access to the current list of outstanding document and interview requests." It also set Friday as the deadline.

The Senate committee is investigating how US intelligence agencies, before the war, had concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or such weapons programs.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2003)