BY PABLO BACHELET

WASHINGTON - The U.S. intelligence community has ''lost some confidence'' in a 1999 assessment that Cuba had a limited biological weapons development effort, but continues to believe the country poses a concern, a U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

''We're not saying with absolute certainty that they don't'' have a biological weapons program, the intelligence official said.

``What we're saying is that we've lost some confidence in that judgment, that they do.''

WARNINGS SINCE 2002

John Bolton, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, and other top Bush administration officials had been warning since 2002 that Cuba possessed ``at least a limited, developmental, biological weapons research and development effort.''

That wording came from the classified 1999 assessment carried out by the CIA and its analytical arm, the National Intelligence Council, according to State Department officials. The Cuban government has flatly denied the allegation.

The revision is part of what the intelligence official called a ''world-wide scrub'' of intelligence on biological weapons capabilities in the wake of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a key justification to invade the country.

REVISED ASSESSMENT

Administration and congressional officials pointed out that the revised assessment, first reported by The New York Times on Saturday, does not discard the possibility that Cuba has a biological weapons program, but simply states that the intelligence community is now uncertain of the reliability of the sources.

''When I see this thing characterized as a reversal, that is incorrect,'' the intelligence official said.

STILL AN ISSUE

``No one is walking off the field and saying there's no cause for concern, no potential issue here.''

The new assessment came as the State Department requested information from the intelligence community for a proliferation ''compliance report'' on Cuba, the intelligence official said.

''We felt that we owed it to them to give them our newest assessment,'' he added.

Bolton could not be reached for comment and his office said he had not yet seen the new language contained in the assessment, which is also classified.

Congressional aides on Capitol Hill told The Herald that the new assessment ''continues to say serious things about Cuba,'' adding that there is disagreement within the intelligence community ''on the assessment to downgrade Cuba's capability'' on its bioweapons program.

Peter Contostavlos, an aide to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, said the language revision was ''not necessarily any news here'' because the 1999 assessment was not definitive. The new language, which Nelson's office had not seen, ``should not give comfort to those that want to ease the embargo in any way.

Emilio Gonzalez, former Cuba specialist on the Bush White House's National Security Council, said of the new assessment on Cuba: ``If anything, it highlights the fact that this administration continues to monitor Cuba's chemical and bioweapons capability.''

Herald staff writer Nancy San Martin in Miami contributed to this report.