US President George W. Bush has approved the country's first counterintelligence strategy, which calls for a more proactive approach to combating foreign and terrorist spying, officials said Monday.

　　The 14-page strategy said the United States has four essential objectives in counterintelligence, the first of which is to "identify, assess, neutralize and exploit the intelligence activities" of foreign countries, terrorist groups and international criminal organizations who seek to harm US interests.

　　It also calls for the protection of US intelligence collection and analytic capabilities from adversary denial, penetration, influence, or manipulation.

　　The other two objectives are to "help enable the successful execution" of sensitive national security operation and to "help safeguard our vital national security secrets, critical assets, and technologies against theft, covert foreign diversion, or exploitation."

　　The summary did not provide details over how to achieve those objectives. But it said the United States would "extend the safeguards of strategic counterintelligence to the Global War on Terrorism."