US finds 'suspect vials'

US finds 'suspect vials'

The US military says one sample was labelled "tabun"

US troops say they have found thousands of boxes of unidentified white powder and some nerve agent antidote at an industrial site south-west of Baghdad.

They also said they discovered documents in Arabic, which apparently explain how to carry out chemical warfare.

A special team has been sent to investigate the discovery at Latifiya - part of a large military complex frequently visited frequently by UN weapons inspectors before the war began.

US troops have also reportedly found a second site nearby containing vials of unidentified liquid and white powder.

The Iraqi authorities have not commented on the finds so far. The regime has denied hiding chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from UN inspectors.

When hostilities finish, there will be huge pressure on the US and Britain to find Saddam's alleged chemical weapons - the supposed reason for going to war - BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says.

Investigating teams have so far only managed to reach fewer than 1% of all the suspect sites they are interested in, a British military source told the BBC.

Recent inspection

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the Latifiya complex was "clearly a suspicious site".

NERVE AGENTS

Iraqi protective gear - found at several sites

Chemical weapons: Nerve agents

But a senior US official familiar with initial testing said the white powder found at Latifiya was believed to be explosives, AP reported.

Latifiya is part of the large Qa Qa military complex, just one of a number of sites clustered around the capital where the Iraqi Government is thought to have developed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the BBC's Paul Adams says.

UN inspectors have visited the plant at least a dozen times, including as recently as 18 February.

Nerve agent

In a separate development, US military spokesman Vincent Brooks said troops in the western desert had found what they suspected was a training school for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare.

One bottle found at the site was labelled "tabun" - a nerve agent that the US Government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

"In that particular site, we believe that was the only sample," Brooks said.

"That's why we believe it was a training site. Our conclusion is that this was not a (weapons of mass destruction) site ... it proved to be far less than that."

Photos of the site showed shelves of brown bottles with yellow labels. Brooks said troops did not understand some of the labels and were collecting the bottles for examination by experts.