A top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official acknowledged on Friday there were "shortcomings" in the US prewar intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but said "it is wrong to exaggerate the flaws."

"It is wrong to exaggerate the flaws or leap to the judgment that our challenges with prewar Iraq weapons intelligence are evidence of sweeping problems across the broad spectrum of issues with which the intelligence community must deal," CIA deputy director John McLaughlin said at a press conference in response toa Senate intelligence committee report released earlier in the day.

The report criticized US intelligence agencies for overstating the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction andgiving the Bush administration incorrect conclusions before the US-led war on Iraq in early 2003.

"We recognize those shortcomings and, long before today's report, have taken a number of steps to address them and to ensurethat they are not repeated," he said.

McLaughlin argued that the conclusions were supported by a lot of underlying intelligence, which "varied in quality from issue toissue."

He said the Senate report was essentially an in-depth look at asingle document, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which asserted Iraq was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program and had chemical and biological weapons.

"Although we think the judgments were not unreasonable when they were made nearly two years ago, we understand with all we have learned since then that we could have done better," he said.

McLaughlin said one significant error was in allowing the key judgments in the estimate to be published without sufficient caveats and disclaimers where relevant knowledge was incomplete.

The CIA has been under fire for failures in prewar intelligenceon Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a major justification the Bush administration cited for launching war on Iraq early last year. No such weapons have been found so far.