UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14: The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said on Friday that inspectors had not found any weapons of mass destruction during their search in Iraq, but he did not rule out the possibility that they may exist.

In a much-awaited address to a bitterly divided UN Security Council, Mr Blix also cast doubt on the significance of some intelligence information offered by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Iraq’s weapons programmes.

He said the two satellite images Mr Powell showed to the council on Feb 5 did not prove that Iraq was clearing the site of forbidden munitions.

“The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of an imminent inspection,” Blix said.

The chief inspector said the main problem for UN weapons inspectors lay in locating such chemical weapons as the deadly VX nerve agent Iraq was known to have in 1998 but were not on the Iraqi declaration.

Mr Blix told the council that Iraq should either present any lethal weapons to inspectors for destruction or show evidence that they have been destroyed.

He also said he had seen no evidence that Iraq had advance knowledge of the inspectors’ plans.

In his speech the chief of the International Atomic Agency (IAEA), Muhamed ElBaradei, said his inspectors had found no evidence of prohibited nuclear activities in Iraq, but at the same time urged Baghdad to cooperate fully and actively to speed up the inspection process.

“We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq,” Mr ElBaradei said.

“However ... a number of issues are still under investigation,” he said.

The IAEA chief said the agency might never be able to reach a final conclusion on 32 tons of the high-explosive HMX, which Iraq said was for use in quarrying.

He also said documents on Iraq’s post-1998 nuclear programme which Iraqi officials handed over last week, contained no new information that would help clarify inspectors’ questions related to Iraqi nuclear weapons design.

The UN Security Council is expected to decide whether the Baghdad is in “material breach” of Security Council resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November.

The resolution called upon Iraq to disclose its capabilities to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, cooperate with UN inspectors and give up weapons prohibited under agreements signed at the end of the Gulf war.

The United States and Britain are convinced that Baghdad is in “material breach” and are expected to table a resolution calling for use of force to make Iraq comply with UN demands. But France, Russia, China and Germany — opposed to using military force — have joined forces to propose a plan to increase the number of inspectors and give them more time to hunt for weapons.

Friday’s meeting is the third time in a month foreign ministers have flocked to the Security Council. The first was on Jan 20 for a ministerial meeting on counter-terrorism organized by France. The second was on Feb 5 to hear US Secretary of State Colin Powell present intelligence to make the Bush administration’s case against Iraq.

The foreign ministers who spoke to the Council included Farouq al Shara of Syria, Dominique de Villepin of France, Soledad Alvear of Chile, Tang Jiaxuan of China, Ana Palacio of Spain, Jack Straw of Britain, Colin Powell of the United States, Igor Ivanov of Russia, Luis Ernesto Derbez of Mexico. Germany’s Joschka Fischer, who chaired the meeting, was the last speaker.

POWELL: The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declared that the UN Security Council should find Iraq in “material breach” of resolution 1441 and reaffirm its warning of serious consequences.