WASHINGTON - After a months-long review by a U.S. House ethics panel, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has disclosed the amount of his privately-paid trip to Mecca in December.

The trip, paid for by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, cost $13,350, Ellison said Thursday.

The two-week trip to Saudi Arabia, which Ellison described as a personal religious pilgrimage, or Hajj, prompted little discussion until June when Ellison filed financial travel reports that failed to disclose the amount the Muslim group had paid for his travel.

In releasing the amount on Thursday, Ellison held to his previous assertion that he was following the instructions of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, commonly known as the ethics committee.

"I never had a moral objection to giving the number out," said Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. "But the rules said I didn't have to, so I didn't. Now I am."

What changed is the committee's view of the trip.

In a Sept. 21 letter to Ellison, ethics officials had said that a "statutorily-mandated review" of Ellison's financial disclosure statements indicated that he originally had "disclosed the trip properly." But "upon further review," the committee said, Ellison must now report the cost of the trip.

The letter, signed by committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and ranking Republican Jo Bonner of Alabama, said, "We consider this change to be merely a minor, technical correction, and we concur that you followed proper procedures and committee guidance."

In explaining the discrepancy with the panel's October, 2008, advice -- rendered two months before the trip -- Lofgren and Bonner noted that Ellison's original itinerary indicated he might add "meetings of an official nature, such as with government or business leaders."

In some cases where House members can show that they are accepting paid travel for business purposes unrelated to their official duties in Congress, they don't have to fully disclose the costs.