NEW YORK, April 25: President Bush said on Friday that Iraqi officials and scientists had provided the United States with information that Saddam Hussein might have destroyed or dispersed chemical and biological weapons before the war, suggesting that it would be a long search.

“I think there’s going to be scepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction programme,” he said in an interview with NBC on Thursday.

Despite that, he expressed confidence that American forces would eventually find chemical and biological weapons.

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some,” Mr Bush said.

The US president said there was considerable evidence that Saddam Hussein was dead or severely wounded but that the United States did not have definitive proof, like DNA, that the Iraqi leader had been killed.

Mr Bush also said the resistance faced by American troops in southern Iraq in the conflict’s first weeks was fiercer than he had expected, an admission that seemed at odds with the Pentagon’s insistence at the time that the war was unfolding according to plan.

“Shock and awe said to many people that all we’ve got to do is unleash some might and people will crumble,” Mr Bush said in the interview, his most extensive since the invasion of Iraq. “And it turns out the fighters were a lot fiercer than we thought.”

He gave a detailed account of how the war looked from his perspective as commander-in-chief. He said he had some initial concerns about the first blow of the war, his last-minute decision to bomb a home in Baghdad where an agent had reported that Mr Hussein and his sons might be spending the night.

But in the end, Mr Bush said, he was convinced that he had a good opportunity to kill Mr Hussein. The agent who provided the information from the scene, he added, judged the bombing a success.

Asked if it might take two years to bring stability to Iraq, Mr Bush replied: “It could, it could. Or less. Who knows?”

However, Mr Bush did not elaborate on the evidence that the United States had gathered since the war’s end about Iraq’s weapons programmes. He acknowledged that questions about the credibility of the United States would not be put to rest until weapons were found.

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE: Mr Bush had nothing nice to say about President Jacques Chirac of France, who led the opposition to a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. “I doubt he’ll be coming to the ranch anytime soon,” he said.