‘Smoking gun’ search continues

A US military excavator shovels another load of mud onto a canal bank near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, cutting a deep trench.

The digger strikes a slab of concrete, raising hopes this could be a hidden dump of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction a nuclear, biological or chemical smoking gun to help justify the US-led war to oust the Iraqi leader. Nothing is found.

After days of intense digging and searching at least seven suspicious sites near Nasiriyah, US experts have found chemical warfare protective suits, but no chemical weapons.

Chief warrant officer Alex Robinson, leading the US search in the area, admitted yesterday his list of suspect sites in southern Iraq was "drying up". Robinson said his team's various inspections had found an antidote to nerve gas, but had otherwise turned up "regular laboratory chemicals that you'd find in a high school lab".

A trailer at the back of a military hospital, suspected of being a mobile chemical weapons laboratory, turned out to be a cooking trailer, while a laboratory the US team visited was for research into concrete work, he said.

"The tip-offs you don't go to look at will be the one that has whatever it is you want to find," said Robinson, who comes from Carlsbad, California.