Fighters said to covet chemical weapons

Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but US and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former president Saddam Hussein of Iraq and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.

The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122mm rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals."

The statement came just hours after two senior Polish defense officials said in Warsaw, based on preliminary reports, that the rocket rounds had contained deadly sarin nerve gas and actions by the Polish unit in Iraq had kept them from being purchased by militants fighting coalition forces.

Yesterday's coalition release also said that two other 122mm rounds, found June 16 by the Poles with help from an Iraqi informer, had tested positive for small quantities of sarin but were "so deteriorated . . . [as] to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces."

The Poles' discoveries had generated renewed talk that prewar claims about Hussein's stock of unconventional weapons might yet prove true.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for example, told an interviewer Wednesday that Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski of Poland had told him about the weapons at last weekend's NATO summit in Turkey.

Though Rumsfeld made clear he had no personal knowledge of test results, he said the Poles "believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons -- sarin and mustard gas."

Szmajdzinski told Polish radio that the rockets and mortars probably had been hidden from United Nations inspectors.

"Our predictions and reports that Saddam Hussein did not come clean with a large sum of weapons, artillery shells, and of weapons of mass destruction were proven true," he said.

"Some of those warheads were old, but it could not be ruled out some could still be used," he added.

Charles Duelfer, the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, has said that some old sarin and mustard rounds have been discovered in scattered places but said he could not say whether military-capable stockpiles remained concealed.