WASHINGTON, April 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House had promoted missile defense, instead of combating terrorism, as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

    On Sept. 11, 2001, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to deliver a speech outlining a Bush administration policy that would address the threats the United States faces. Butthe focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals, the Post said.

    The speech, which was never delivered because of the attacks, mentioned terrorism as one of the dangers from rouge nations such as Iraq rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States, the Post said. The text contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups.

    The speech also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration's policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat -- long-range missiles, according to excerpts of the speech provided to the Post.

    The White House has declined to release the complete text of Rice's speech but did confirm the accuracy of the excerpts, the Post said. Former US officials provided a detailed summary of the speech, the newspaper said.

    The Post said the text of the Rice speech broadly reflects Bushadministration foreign policy statements during the eight months leading to the attacks. The administration devoted far more attention to pushing missile defense rather than addressing terrorism during that period, the newspaper said.

    "Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism rated lower on the list of priorities, as outlined by officials in their own public statements on policy," the Post said.

    The question of whether the Bush administration was properly focused on the terrorist threat before Sept. 11 has become the focus of an investigation by an independent commission looking into months leading to the attacks.

    President George W. Bush on Tuesday agreed to allow Rice to testify publicly to the independent commission under oath, a majorreversal that came after weeks of public pressure to do so.

    The change of heart came in light of the furor created by the White House refusal to allow Rice to testify in public and by sworn testimony to the same panel last week by Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief.

    Clarke has stirred a political firestorm by accusing, both in his testimony and his new memoir, the Bush administration of failing to take seriously enough the danger from al Qaeda. The White House strenuously disputes the charges. Enditem