The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended last month, but the analysis of documents seized in the hunt continues, US officials said on Wednesday. Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the investigation, has returned home and is expected next month to issue a final addendum to his September report that concluded pre-war Iraq had no WMD stockpiles, officials said.
Asked if Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, or ISG, had stopped actively searching for WMD, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "That's my understanding." He added, "A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now."
The Washington Post newspaper on Wednesday quoted ISG officials saying the violence in Iraq coupled with a lack of new information led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas - nearly two years after President George W. Bush invaded the country, accusing it of a secret weapons programme.
"The physical search is over. The team that did the physical search is back. But the document exploitation of documents found in Iraq continues. We found tonnes of documents," one US official said.
But McClellan told reporters at a White House briefing that the ISG's mission in Iraq was not completely over.
"That group is still in Iraq and the multinational forces continue to oversee that group, and if they have any reports of WMD, obviously they'll continue to follow up on those reports," he said.
McClellan said he believed "a few people" in the ISG were still focused on finding WMD stockpiles.
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