By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify publicly on April 8 before the Sept. 11, 2001, commission in an attempt to counter bombshell charges that President George W. Bush failed to make terrorism an urgent priority before 9/11.

Responding to heavy political pressure from both Republicans and Democrats, the White House made an abrupt about-face on Tuesday and agreed to allow Rice to testify publicly and under oath after previously insisting she only speak to the panel privately.

A main area of questioning for Rice is expected to be claims by former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke that Bush ignored an urgent al Qaeda threat before the 9/11 attacks and was fixated on Iraq.

At the White House, which was battered by criticism of its refusal to let Rice testify, there was hope that the appearance by the articulate national security adviser would allow the administration to get the last word on Clarke and turn the page on the bad news of the past week.

Bush's re-election strategy rests a great deal on his performance in the war on terrorism and the White House is sensitive to any suggestion that he was not doing enough to try to prevent the attacks.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a visit to Berlin, told ZDF German television that the Bush administration "did as much as we could, knowing what we knew about the situation."

"We raised our threat levels. We warned our embassies. We warned our people around the world. We made sure our military was safe and were not exposed... We did everything we could to protect ourselves," Powell said.

First lady Laura Bush told Fox News Channel she did not recall specific conversations with her husband about terrorism before 9/11 but that her husband was serious about upholding his oath-of-office pledge to protect the United States.

"I know he took that very, very seriously," she said.

The White House took issue with an article in The Washington Post that said Bush, Rice and others in the top echelon of power were more concerned about missile defense than terrorism in the months before 9/11.

MISSILE DEFENSE

The Post published excerpts of a speech that Rice was to have delivered on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, that the newspaper said promoted missile defense as the cornerstone of the Bush administration's national security policy.

"You're talking about one speech," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "I think you need to look at the actions and concrete steps that we were taking to confront the threat of terrorism."

The White House would not reveal the entire text of the aborted speech, prompting a request from New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer that it be released.

Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution who worked on Democratic President Bill Clinton's National Security Council, doubted the Bush administration would be able to find any reference to al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden by any top officials in the months before Sept. 11.

The Rice speech, he said, "is just the final cherry on the pudding proving that what these people were concerned about was not al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden but madmen with missiles."

Questions arose in Washington about contacts between the Bush administration and Republican commissioners as they prepared to grill Clarke about his charges last week.

People close to the commission said White House counsel Alberto Gonzales called commissioners Fred Fielding and James Thompson. The two went on to sharply criticize Clarke.

McClellan would not confirm the calls. He accused Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, of trying to "politicize" the commission's deliberations by asking the White House to detail Gonzales' conversations with the commissioners.

(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)