Washington ? More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has failed to create a unified U.S. fingerprint database because of agency infighting, meaning most visitors to the country still aren’t fully screened for terrorist or criminal ties, the Justice Department’s watchdog warned Wednesday.

The continued bureaucratic clashing — the very behavior the Bush administration pledged to end after the attacks — is causing serious delays in solving the problem. In his fourth report about the situation, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said the situation “creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected.”

Despite some improvement, the Justice, State and Homeland Security departments are at an impasse over such basic issues as whether two or 10 fingers should be printed at U.S. borders and which law enforcement agencies should have access to immigration information.

Without an integrated system, the review found that watch lists used to check certain visitors at the borders contain only a small portion of the 47 million records in FBI fingerprint files — the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS — and that these incomplete lists are prone to error.

“The likelihood of missing a criminal alien or terrorist is increased” without expanded use of the FBI files, Fine said.

Since the 2001 attacks, Congress has repeatedly pushed the agencies to devise a single, quick fingerprint identification system that could be used by all law enforcement agencies as well as immigration and intelligence officials. The agencies’ inability to reach common ground runs counter to the repeated pledges of cooperation that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.