Yet it also underscored the need to strengthen preparedness and risk reduction in the communities that are hit repeatedly by crisis.
Mr. Gephardt also said the Enron debacle underscored the need to overhaul campaign finance laws.
He said it underscored the need to continue efforts already under way to tighten safeguards.
Allied officials said, in particular, that the episode last Monday underscored the need to take action against the seaborne threat.
But such shortcomings only underscored the need to strengthen the role of the office after 9/11, not diminish it.
Mr. Bush replied that the problems underscored the need to develop a national energy policy, the other men said.
A Xinhua report said that Mr. Xi underscored the need to deepen the market-oriented reforms begun in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader.
"It's totally unacceptable, it should stop immediately," he told Al Jazeera English, adding that it underscored the need to deploy more observers as quickly as possible.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that the deaths underscored the need to pay special attention to elderly relatives and neighbors during the heat.
Dr. Rowland said the new finding was important because it underscored the need to give serious consideration to even the atmosphere's most minor constituents.
They said the region's drought underscored the need to protect the drinking water provided by the reservoirs, rivers and streams of the Highlands from overdevelopment.
