IRAQ: The US official who is leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq said yesterday the search was making "solid progress" but it would take time to unwrap the hidden programmes.
Mr David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector, however, sidestepped questions about whether actual banned weapons had been found.
"There is solid evidence being produced. We do not intend to expose this evidence until we have full confidence that it is solid proof," he told reporters after a closed-door Senate Armed Services Committee briefing in Washington.
"We are making solid progress. It is going to take time," said Mr Kay, who recently returned from Iraq where he was sent by the CIA as a special adviser to develop a strategy for finding biological and chemical weapons and evidence of a resumed nuclear weapons programme.
Iraqi scientists and freshly unearthed documents have led the WMD hunting team to new, previously unknown sites in Iraq, Mr Kay said.
"We have Iraqi scientists who were involved in these programmes who are assisting us in taking them apart. They are collaborating and co-operating," he said.
Maj Gen Keith Dayton, who heads the Iraq Survey Group of about 1,500 coalition experts that took over the search for banned weapons in June, said: "Every week it is phenomenal what we're finding, and I am much more optimistic and confident every week that we're going to come to a very good resolution of this in due time.".
Senators emerged from the briefing with optimistic comments that evidence of banned weapons would emerge down the road. - (Reuters)