Washington ? Between describing threats of hurtling missiles and potential terrorist attacks, CIA Director George J. Tenet and other top U.S. intelligence officials are warning of worsening economic conditions and demographics in parts of the world conditions that stand to create more terrorists.

Some of the largest populations of young people in the world are growing up in parts of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa that lack stable economies that will provide them meaningful work, Tenet said in prepared remarks delivered to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

“The problems that terrorists exploit poverty, alienation and ethnic tensions will grow more acute over the next decade,” Tenet said. “This will especially be the case in those parts of the world that have served as the most fertile recruiting grounds for Islamic extremist groups.”

The CIA chief, who is directing much of the U.S. covert war against al-Qaida, also said the educational systems in many Islamic countries breed hatred for the United States.

“Primary and secondary education in parts of the Muslim world is often dominated by an interpretation of Islam that teaches intolerance and hatred,” Tenet said. “The graduates of these schools ‘madrasas’ provide the foot soldiers for many of the Islamic militant groups that operate throughout the Muslim world.”

The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency _ a Pentagon organization more frequently given to estimates of foreign military capabilities than analyses of socioeconomic conditions also described how the losers in globalization can turn to extremist movements.

“The conditions they live in are fertile ground for political, ethnic, ideological and religious extremism, and their frustration is increasingly directed at the United States and the West,” said Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson in written remarks submitted to the committee. “In the globalized world we ignore them at our own peril.”

The intelligence officials also warned of more immediate threats in Wednesday’s remarks.

In his first testimony to Congress since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Tenet said al-Qaida remains the greatest immediate threat to U.S. national security, despite the destruction of Osama bin Laden’s overt military and training operations in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida’s terrorists have considered attacks against high-profile U.S. government or private facilities, famous landmarks and airports, bridges, harbors, dams, nuclear power plants and industrial chemical facilities, Tenet said.

“High-profile events such as the Olympics or last weekend’s Super Bowl also fit the terrorists’ interests in striking another blow within the United States that would command worldwide media attention,” Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Security officials at the Olympics have said they are not aware of any specific threat to the games.

“Their modus operandi is to continue to have multiple attack plans in the works simultaneously and to have al-Qaida cells in place to conduct them,” Tenet said.

The U.S.-led war on terrorism has brought arrests of nearly 1,000 al-Qaida operatives in more than 60 countries, and ruined the group’s ability to train recruits in Afghan camps, he said.

Tenet was also questioned about the US intelligence’s failure to detect the Sept. 11 attacks ahead of time.

“Why were we utterly unaware of the planning and execution of the Sept. 11 attacks? In other words, what went wrong?” asked Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby.

Tenet defended his agency, but said that the United States never will be able to foresee all attacks.

“We know they will continue to plan, we know they will hurt us again,” Tenet said. “We have to minimize their ability to do so because there is no perfection in this business.”

He said the CIA had known “in broad terms” last summer _ and had warned U.S. officials that bin Laden might attack targets inside the United States. But the CIA had no specific knowledge predicting the Sept. 11 attacks.

The CIA did thwart attacks on three or four U.S. facilities overseas last summer, Tenet said. It has disrupted “numerous terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, and we will continue to do so.”

Tenet also detailed threats from other sources, saying Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iraq hopes to rebuild its military and weapons of mass destruction programs and North Korea is exporting its missile technologies.