"Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did in Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons," Selig Harrison wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Harrison, from the Washington-based Center for International Policy, chairs the Task Force on Korean Policy, a grouping of former senior US military officials, diplomats and Korean specialists.

The Task Force, which includes a former joint chiefs of staff head and ex-US ambassadors, on Friday issued a report calling on the US immediately to back down on its insistence that North Korea come clean on its alleged uranium program. Instead, they should first negotiate the dismantling of Pyongyang's plutonium facilities, it said.

"I think that those claims are wrong. And we think there is a wealth of clear and compelling evidence about North Korea's uranium enrichment program," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.

"We have known since the late 1990s that North Korea was interested in enrichment technology. We obtained clear evidence over 2.5 years ago that it was pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium and assessed that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment as an alternate route to nuclear weapons," he added.

"This program was in clear violation of international commitments that North Korea voluntarily undertook, including its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its commitments under the 1994 agreed framework and the North-South denuclearization declaration," Ereli said.

"In addition to that, the director of central intelligence reported to Congress that North Korea had begun seeking centrifuge- related materials in large quantities in 2001, and that it was also obtaining equipment suitable for use in uranium feed and withdraw systems.

"There are claims made in the article that we learned about the uranium enrichment program from the North Koreans. That's not the case.

"We were already aware of the program before they ever talked to us and we informed them of our knowledge about it in October 2002. And it was at that time that North Korea acknowledged to senior US officials that it was pursuing such a covert program," Ereli said.

In late 2002 the Bush administration cited North Korea's alleged uranium program to pull out of the Agreed Framework. That deal had frozen Pyongyang's nuclear program since 1994 in exchange for energy aid and the construction of two billion dollar semi-proliferation-proof light water nuclear reactors.

No concrete evidence of a uranium program has been presented publicly.

In retaliation, Pyongyang kicked out international nuclear inspectors and resumed plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon facility.

It is now believed to have reprocessed enough plutonium for four to six nuclear bombs, experts say.

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