W.House criticized for censoring Sept. 11 report

WASHINGTON, July 27 (Reuters) - A leading Republican senator on Sunday called on the Bush administration to release most of the classified portions of a congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the sections were withheld only to avoid harming relations with other countries.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who helped spearhead last year's probe into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, said the administration wrongly blanked out 27 pages dealing with suspected foreign support of those responsible for the attacks.

"My judgment is 95 percent of that information should be declassified, become uncensored, so the American people would know," Shelby said on NBC's Meet the Press program.

Shelby said the section was classified because it "might be embarrassing to some international relations."

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