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U.S. general: Lack of Iraqi WMD 'a surprise'New search team commander says he trusts intelligence
SOUTHERN IRAQ (CNN) -- A top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Friday that he could not understand why coalition forces have been unable to find any weapons of mass destruction, but a U.S. general who will lead a new inspection team expressed faith in intelligence placing such weapons on Iraqi soil. "It was a surprise to me then as it remains a surprise to me now that we have not uncovered weapons in some of the forward dispersal sites," said Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which is tasked with holding and patrolling southern Iraq. "Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition-supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, and they're simply not there." Disarming Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime of suspected chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons was a primary reason the Bush administration gave for launching the war. No such weapons have yet been found. Conway refrained from pointing fingers. "Intelligence failure, I think, is too strong a word to use at this point," he said. "I don't think that we've given up on the search yet." He told reporters gathered at the Pentagon for a teleconference briefing: "As we moved north [during the first weeks of the war], there were a couple of times when everybody was sleeping with their boots on and with their gas masks pretty close. "One of the real surprises we all experienced is that we did not get struck with weapons of mass destruction as we crossed the Euphrates, or even as we crossed the Tigris and went up against the Republican Guard divisions. "We truly thought that they were distributed, not to everyone, not to regular army divisions that we saw in the South, but my personal belief is that they probably did reside in Republican Guard units," he said. He added that his troops are helping with the postwar search. More than 1,300 investigators planned for IraqLater Friday in Washington, the general leading the new U.S. team that will search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq said he thinks there is credible evidence that Iraq has such weapons. He echoed Conway's surprise at the failure of the searches conducted so far. Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton told reporters that he will leave for Iraq on Monday to head a team of more than 1,300 investigators from the United States, Great Britain and Australia. Between 250 and 300 of those team members -- including some inspectors who were in Iraq before 1998, when all U.N. teams were expelled -- will visit suspected weapons sites, Dayton said. The transition from the current inspection leadership will start no later than June 7 and take about two weeks. Dubbed the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Dayton's team will also be responsible for finding terrorists, war criminals and prisoners of war, the general said. Dayton estimated that slightly fewer than 200 U.S. personnel have so far checked about a third of Iraq's suspected weapons sites. Dayton said his team would be better prepared to respond quickly to intelligence reports and would no longer simply check off a list of suspect sites. "The Iraq Survey Group represents a significant expansion in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction," he said, adding that it would be "a deliberate process and a long-term effort." IAEA to return next weekMeanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to send a team to Iraq for the first time since the war to conduct a safety inspection at an Iraqi nuclear facility that might have been looted, an agency spokesman said Friday. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky cautioned: "These are not weapons inspections. "We are planning to send a team to Iraq tentatively next Wednesday, June 4th, with the purpose of verifying nuclear material held at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center," Gwozdecky said. "This work flows from Iraq's obligations under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty," he added. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told CNN on Friday: "We don't know what to expect. We have seen a lot of reports about looting. We are going to focus on nuclear materials that would [be] under verification. The coalition, however, says that they will take care of the safety and the security of radioactive sources. "I would, again, continue to say that we are ready to help in case our help is needed." ElBaradei will not be in the group going to Iraq. The work will be conducted at Location C, a nuclear material storage facility near the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. According to the IAEA, Location C had about 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium, as well as 500 tons of natural and depleted uranium. The material was under IAEA seal and has been inspected regularly since 1991, the agency said. Gwozdecky said fewer than 10 safeguards experts are expected to leave Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday for Kuwait City, then go on to Iraq. The departure date could change because the U.S. military is responsible for logistics, he added. At the Tuwaitha site, the team "will determine how much of it was looted, get control of as much as we can, put our seals on it, secure the facility and come home. "We have in the last month or more sounded the alarm that these radioactive materials shouldn't be on the loose," he told CNN.
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