Hunt Oil Co. officials and U.S. diplomats talked several times before the company signed an exploration deal in Iraq last September, according to a series of documents emitted Wednesday by a congressional committee prospecting whether the Bush administration has pushed Iraq oil contracts to U.S. companies. The documents indicate that U.S. officials manifested no objections to what the Dallas-based company was doing, regardless of their ulterior criticism that the exploration deal could threaten the Iraqi unity.

In the documents were included two letters from company chief executive officer Ray Hunt to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board last year bordering his company's search of an oil deal in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

After the Sept. 8 arrangement was reported, State Department officials declaimed the company for signing a contract with a regional government before the Iraqi Parliament had passed a national law covering involvement of companies abroad in Iraq's oil industry. President Bush, a friend of Mr. Hunt, said he "knew nothing about the deal."

The documents given forth Wednesday indicate that Hunt managers met last year with U.S. diplomats in Erbil, Iraq, on June 12 and June 15 to shape the company's interest, and were told the U.S. government had no policy "for nor against" contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

However, as soon as the company made a deal, the State Department embraced a more captious perspective. Diplomats told Hunt Oil that such contracts "incur significant political and legal risk," and "would needlessly elevate tensions" between the Kurds and the Iraqi central government, as Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Bergner wrote the Congress. Last month, other U.S. corporations and companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. included, were in the middle of negotiating short-term, service contracts without bid and on a short-term with the Iraqi Oil Ministry to support the raise of oil production. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on the matter of these negotiations that the government "has stayed absolutely out of the matter of the awarding of Iraqi oil contracts." House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., citing the letters, meetings and e-mails between Hunt officials and U.S. diplomats, challenged Dr. Rice's assertion and asked Wednesday for all communications between the department and the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Administration officials have negated that oil was a war motive.