WASHINGTON — Our European allies are rightly asking for hard evidence tying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network in Afghanistan to the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We should provide it to the extent that it doesn't compromise intelligence sources and methods.

The Bush administration has repeatedly said it has the evidence but is still debating how much information it can disclose. The chief reason is that much of it was obtained through secret communications intercepts. Still, at least one former senior Pentagon official said it is possible to find a middle ground in the debate that would provide NATO and other allies the evidence they need to join the United States in a war on terror.

Either way, the United States must find new ways to share intelligence with its traditional allies as well as new members of the anti-terror coalition.

The fact is, the United States lacks a reliable intelligence network on the ground in central Asia. The U.S. military will be heavily dependent on outfits such as the Pakistani military's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence unit for information on bin Laden's whereabouts and Al Qaeda operations.

The sooner Washington develops procedures for sharing intelligence, the sooner it can find and punish those responsible for the horrific attacks in New York and Washington.

The United States is by far the world's leader in technical spying — imagery, signals and measurement and signature intelligence. The terror attacks exposed the woeful state of U.S. human intelligence, or humint. Given the huge language and cultural barriers faced by the United States in infiltrating and breaking the terror networks, the Bush administration should be developing ways to swap technical for human intelligence.

Instead, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary, told reporters last week on a plane returning form NATO headquarters in Brussels that "a lot of what I told them is simply in the public record."

U.S. military officials have reminded us repeatedly in recent days that the first war of the 21st century won't be like the Gulf War or, for that matter, any other previous war. If that's right, we will need the help of old and new allies to provide a broad range of military, economic and intelligence capabilities.

As we've learned the hard way, cruise missiles alone won't stop terror and may eventually abet violence on our own shores.

The place to start in fixing the intelligence gap is to find a way, whether it's a white paper promised recently by Secretary of State Colin Powell or some other means, of providing the world with irrefutable evidence of Bin Laden's guilt. Our NATO allies need and deserve to see it before asking their people to take the momentous step of going to war.