Looking for Iraqi weapons would be a waste of time - Rumsfeld

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strongly doubts sending new UN weapons inspectors to Iraq would be worth the effort - a view not officially shared by the State Department.

Speaking yesterday about the prospect of resuming efforts to look for evidence that Iraq is illicitly developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, Rumsfeld said he thinks Baghdad would inevitably find ways to deny access or deceive the inspectors.

To lift the veil of secrecy from Saddam’s work on weapons of mass destruction would require an inspection system that is ‘‘enormously intrusive’’ - more so than anything tried in the past, Rumsfeld said.

‘‘I just cannot quite picture how intrusive something would have to be that it could offset the ease with which they have previously been able to deny and deceive, and which today one would think they would be vastly more skilful, having had all this time without inspectors there,’’ Rumsfeld said.

His remarks contrasted sharply with comments made separately by State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, who said it is the Bush administration’s policy to insist Iraq permit unhindered inspections.

‘‘Iraq has to comply fully and unconditionally with all applicable United Nations Security Council resolutions, including the return of UN weapons inspectors, and cooperate fully with them,’’ Reeker said.

Rumsfeld did not say what should be done if effective inspections should prove impossible.

In the past he has endorsed the view that if the goal is to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, then military action would be more effective than diplomacy.

In January 1998, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who is now deputy secretary of defence, signed an open letter to then-President Bill Clinton, stating it was nearly impossible to adequately monitor Saddam’s weapons programmes.

They said the only acceptable strategy is to ‘‘eliminate the possibility’’ that Iraq could use or threaten to use a weapon of mass destruction, and this would require military action.