US rejects doubts over Iraqi arms

Doubts persist over how advanced Iraq's arsenal was

United States officials have played down the significance of a leaked US intelligence report casting fresh doubt on coalition claims about Iraq's weapons.

The Pentagon has confirmed that last September's classified report by the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) said there was no absolute proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The report was written as the Bush administration was preparing its case against Baghdad - which hinged on Iraq's alleged possession of such weapons.

The head of the DIA, Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, said on Friday that his agency had never doubted the existence of banned Iraqi weapons.

He said the assessment had to be seen in the context of the fact that there was no US or international presence in Iraq at the time.

Questions

However, the BBC's Pentagon correspondent, Nick Childs, says the 80-page report will fuel the controversy.

Critics of the administration have argued that some members of the US intelligence community were much less positive about Iraq's arsenal than were senior policy makers.

We could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction programme

DIA director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby

At the time, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said there was no debate about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The CIA has launched an investigation to see if intelligence reports were distorted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Congressional committees are soon to begin hearings on this question.

For now, our correspondent says, most Americans seem ready to give the administration the benefit of the doubt.

But, he adds, with clear evidence of banned Iraqi weaponry still proving elusive, questions in Congress and elsewhere about whether administration policymakers went beyond their expert intelligence analysts are not going away.

Search

News of the report came as United Nations nuclear experts arrived in Iraq on Friday to investigate post-war looting of material from the country's main nuclear facility.

WERE WE MISLED OVER WMD?

You don't think that Saddam was knitting for the last few years after he kicked out the inspectors? Have some patience.

Sandy Clark, US

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Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will spend two weeks at the Tuwaitha complex, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad.

They will try to determine what is missing, deal with what is left and make it safe.

The UN experts at Tuwaitha are being blocked from investigating the reports of contamination and sickness. The US argues that as the occupying power it is responsible for the health of the Iraqi people.

The Pentagon limited the number of inspectors to seven.

The Americans will deal with the search for weapons of mass destruction themselves - a US-backed team of 1,400 inspectors is due in Iraq in the coming days.

US forces have not yet found any banned arms in Iraq, but the administration says it has no doubt it will eventually find some.