US non-committal on suspected Iraqi chemical weapons find

US marines have discovered 278 artillery shells carrying a substance that tested positive as a chemical agent, senior officers said yesterday. But other US military sources played down the importance of the find.

Major Stephen Armes, operations officer of the Marines 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, said the shells containing suspected blister agents were found in trailers in a schoolyard. Three were mounted on launchers, he said.

“They tested positive for chemical weapons,” he told AFP. But Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla, the battalion commander, said more tests were required.

General Tommy Franks said earlier that US forces have yet to find conclusive proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but thousands of sites remain to be searched.

“I have not found any that I have absolutely satisfied myself are ... weapon of mass destruction materials,” Gen Franks told CNN.

“But you’re talking about 2,000, 3,000 perhaps, places in this country where we know we’re going to go and investigate each one of them.

"We may have ... somewhere between five and 10 and 15 site exploitations ongoing in a 24-hour period of time.”

Some of these tests may take as long as the war itself he said.

The US and Britain invaded Iraq on March 20, saying Saddam Hussein had failed to declare banned weapons.

But there has been no chemical or biological attack against invading troops, and no confirmed discovery of banned weapons has been reported.

Military planners are convinced Iraq planned to use chemical weapons against the invaders, but its command and control was so overwhelmed by the speed and ferocity of the US advance hat the order never went out.

The Iraqi army was based on a Soviet model, in which officers wait for orders from superiors and rarely take initiatives.

Planners say this could explain why many bridges rigged for destruction were not blown up: the divisional commanders simply were not contactable to give the orders.

Officials suspect the Iraqis may have balked at using chemical weapons because of severe warnings on leaflets dropped by US forces.