Bush vows to find banned arms

US President George W. Bush vowed yesterday to uncover the facts about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, as a US-run radio station in Baghdad appealed to Iraqis to help find the missing arsenal.

US troops came under attack again in Iraq, where one soldier was killed and five wounded in the troubled western city of Falluja, and two were wounded outside a Baghdad bank.

Eight weeks after deposing President Saddam, US and British forces have struggled to impose their grip on the capital and other parts of Iraq. They have found no weapons of mass destruction.

"We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth," President Bush told cheering US troops at a base in Qatar.

The failure to find the banned weapons that London and Washington cited as the main reason why President Saddam had to be removed has fuelled a political storm, especially in Britain.

"Everybody who has taken part in developing, storing, moving and acquiring weapons of mass destruction should provide coalition forces with information," said the US-run radio.

The United States and its allies are sending a greatly expanded team of experts to Iraq to join the hunt, but they have offered no role to the previous UN arms inspectors. Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, who retires on June 30, was due to appear at the Security Council later yesterday. He wants the council to exploit a decade of UN arms research in Iraq and let UN experts finish the job.

In a written report on Monday, Mr Blix said his inspectors had found no evidence of banned weapons. At the same time, he said Iraq had not accounted fully for all its past arms programmes.

A small team from the International Atomic Energy Agency is due in Iraq today to check on looting of atomic materials, but the United States has barred it from visiting all but one site at a nuclear research complex south of Baghdad.

US efforts to create an interim Iraqi administration have run into criticism from groups who say any interim council should be chosen by a national conference, not appointed.

US and British officials say they hope names for a 25- to 30-member interim political council will emerge by consensus from their consultations with a broad range of Iraqis.

Seven Iraqi political groups are due to meet top US administrator Paul Bremer today for more talks on the political transition - and some want more democracy now.

Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani conferred with Shi'ite leaders in the holy city of Najaf yesterday, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Mohammed al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric.

Sistani wields much influence over Shi'ites, about 60 per cent of Iraq's 26 million people. He does not advocate an active political role for Shi'ite clerics.

The Kurdish leader was due to meet Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), later yesterday.

SCIRI spokesman Hamid al-Bayati, who was at Barzani's talks with Sistani, said the meeting had reinforced his group's view that Iraq should have its own government and elections.

"The Shi'ites of Iraq would like to see a democratic government with respect for Islam, the religion of the Iraqi people," Mr Bayati told Reuters.

Kurds and Shi'ites suffered greatly at the hands of President Saddam's Sunni Muslim-dominated government.

Iraqi troops crushed Kurdish and Shi'ite revolts after the 1991 Gulf War. Former President George Bush had urged Iraqis to rise against President Saddam, but then did nothing to help them.

His son, the current US president, emphasised in his speech to the troops in Qatar that the war liberated Iraq from a brutal dictator, citing the mass graves found in the mainly Kurdish north and Shi'ite south in recent weeks.

"You see, the world is now learning what many of you have seen," President Bush said. "They're learning about the mass graves, thousands of people just summarily executed."

The U.S. military said late on Wednesday it had captured the commander of one of Saddam's paramilitary groups, the Al Quds Force. He was one of 55 Iraqis on a wanted list.

Efforts to revive Iraq's prostrate economy were boosted on Thursday when the state oil marketing organisation tendered to sell its first crude since the fall of Saddam.