March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bush administration officials said today they will ask Russia about captured documents that say the Russian ambassador in Iraq gave intelligence about U.S. military strategy to Saddam Hussein during the March 2003 invasion.

``Anytime a country provides information to an enemy that would potentially put people at risk, we take that very seriously,'' the president's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said today on CBS's ``Face The Nation'' program in Washington. ``We will be raising it with the Russians.''

Hadley and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in separate interviews that they haven't reached any conclusions about whether the report is true. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service denies the allegation, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

The report is part of a study issued March 24 by the Pentagon and based on thousands of captured Iraqi documents and interviews with Iraqi military and political officials. The study says Russia's ambassador gave Iraq ``strategic intelligence'' on U.S. troop movements and bombing targets. Russia, along with France and Germany, led the opposition at the United Nations to the U.S. invasion.

The study, by the Joint Forces Command, said the intelligence was passed to Iraq's foreign minister, who in turn passed it on to Hussein in a memo dated April 2, 2003. At the time, U.S. forces were advancing rapidly toward the capital and Iraqi generals were assessing how to reposition their Republican Guard divisions. The report didn't identify the minister by name. Naji Sabri was Hussein's last foreign minister.

No Conclusions

Rice said it was too early to point fingers.

``I would not jump to the conclusion that this -- if, indeed, the reports are true -- that it had to be Moscow- directed,'' she said on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``So let's take a look and let's talk with the Russian government about it.''

Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on ``Face the Nation'' that the U.S. needs ``an entirely new assessment of our relationship with Russia, should this be true.''

The administration should consider boycotting the July summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations, which will be held in Russia this year for the first time, he said.

Hadley disagreed, saying ``there's a lot of value'' to going through with the summit because Russia will be forced ``to answer some tough questions'' about the progress of democracy there.

Kennedy's Criticism

Kennedy also criticized the Bush administration for not having reached a conclusion about the evidence.

``It's difficult for me to understand why the administration doesn't know today what happened,'' Kennedy said. ``I can't think of anything that's on the president's desk or on the National Security Council desk more important.''

Sabri, the former foreign minister, was a paid spy for French intelligence and provided information to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency more than six months before the invasion, the Washington Post reported March 23. The French and the CIA used a ``third-party'' intermediary to try to get information from Sabri, the Post reported. NBC, which first reported March 20 on Sabri, said the CIA paid him more than $100,000 though an intermediary.

Sabri lives in an undisclosed location in the Middle East, NBC said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Judy Mathewson in Washington at jmathewson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 26, 2006 15:53 EST