US intelligence community is hesitating over making a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq public after an NIE on Iran caused uproar.

US intelligence officials say that the National Intelligence Board -- comprised of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell -- will decide whether to publicly release the new classified estimate on Iraq or keep it secret, Washington Post reported.

The document, scheduled to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army General David H. Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, is an update of a last summer's report, predicting an increasingly precarious political situation in the war-shattered country.

Although McConnell, in internal guidance issued in October, said that his policy was that they "should not be declassified", the intelligence board decided in November to make its assessment on Iran's nuclear program public.

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The estimate that confirmed Iran's nuclear program is civilian undermined the Bush administration's position on Tehran.

McConnell had also said that two estimates on the "terrorist threat to the homeland" -- focusing on al-Qaeda and Pakistan -- and on "the tactical and longer-term security and political outlook for Afghanistan are being prepared and slated for publication by early fall.