Washington ? President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Republican and congressional sources said Saturday.

The shift by the White House, which had previously maintained that any such inquiry should wait until a more exhaustive weapons search has been completed, came after pressure from lawmakers in both parties and from the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.

There was no official confirmation from the White House Saturday, but sources in the government said Bush’s announcement of support for an independent commission was imminent. Vice President Dick Cheney has begun to call lawmakers on the intelligence committees, who have encouraged the administration to proceed with an inquiry.

The White House has not settled on what type of independent review it would favor and has not backed any specific plan.

Bush’s shift represents an effort to get out in front of a potentially dangerous issue that threatens his re-election bid. An independent commission would not necessarily absolve Bush politically, congressional officials said, but it could quiet the current furor and delay calls for top-level resignations at the CIA and elsewhere until after the elections, diluting the potency of the issue for Democrats.

David Kay, who resigned his post nine days ago, testified Wednesday that “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s weapons programs. He said it was unlikely that stockpiles would be found in Iraq.

Sources said Bush intended to endorse a commission in the coming days while remaining publicly agnostic on the accuracy of the intelligence that the administration used to take the nation to war in Iraq. Though some in the White House favor a frank admission that the intelligence was wrong — something lawmakers and inspectors have given — Bush and his aides have so far concluded that would only increase the pressure on them.

How much authority the commission would have to investigate intelligence-gathering and how the intelligence was used is not clear.