House panel approves subpoena for Rice

Washington - A congressional oversight panel voted Wednesday to issue a subpoena compelling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about now discredited pre-war allegations about Iraq's nuclear ambitions.

Rice has resisted appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, arguing that she has answered the panel's written questions on the issue which has already been thoroughly examined.

The State Department has also said Rice's busy schedule does not include time to address an old issue.

'We note the committee's actions and will be consulting with the White House on this matter,' State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

'The secretary has addressed this four-year-old issue on many occasions and the subject already has been exhaustively investigated,' he said in a statement.

The committee voted 21-10 to authorize the committee's chairman, Democratic Representative Henry Waxman, to subpoena Rice. Waxman wants to question Rice, who was then President George W Bush's national security adviser, about her role in the accusations that Saddam Hussein's regime tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

The assertion was used in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address less than two months before the March invasion of Iraq. The following June, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador sent by the Bush administration to Niger to investigate, wrote a column saying the allegations were bogus and should not have been used in the speech.

The initial suspicions were based on a document that turned out to have been forged.