AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, 23 April 2003 — The US military remains confident it will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though it has yet to discover any after a month in the country, a US general said yesterday. Numerous suspect substances have been tested but so far none have been found to be illicit weapons, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a news briefing at Central Command’s war headquarters in Qatar.

“We’ve not found any weaponized chemicals, biological agents or any nuclear devices at this point. That work is ongoing,” Brooks said. “We remain confident that we’ll find evidence of the program that’s been in place in Iraq for some time.” The allegation that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had stores of weapons of mass destruction was a key reason for the US-led invasion that began on March 20.

In some cases, the military has found substances that could have been turned into illicit weapons, but they were in quantities “too small to be weaponized” or they had another, more peaceful purpose such as crop fertilizer, Brooks said.

Meanwhile, Kurds in northern Iraq yesterday welcomed the retired US general overseeing the country’s rebuilding with cheers, hugs and a shower of petals 12 years after he helped them break free from Saddam Hussein.

Jay Garner told an emotional crowd of Kurdish leaders and students in the city of Sulaimaniya, 330 km northeast of Baghdad, that their self-governed region was a model for Iraq after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

“Let’s take the spirit of free people that we have here in the Kurdish provinces and spread it,” he said through an interpreter to explosive applause at Sulaimaniya University. Garner later held talks in Dukan, 50 km to the northwest, with rival Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani, veteran leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

The Kurdish welcome for Garner contrasted with the subdued reception he received on Monday when he arrived in Baghdad and visited a looted hospital amid widespread criticism of US-led forces for failing to supply order, power, food and water.

Thousands of US soldiers poured into central Mosul in tanks and armed trucks yesterday in a show of force aimed at intimidating heavily-armed rival factions and taking control of the divided Iraqi city.

About 50 helicopters shuttled up to 5,000 troops of the 101st Airborne Division from the outskirts of Baghdad to Mosul’s airport, and then armed trucks ferried them into Iraq’s third largest city.

Tank units of the army’s Fourth Infantry Division also rumbled into the violence-plagued city, passing grand mosques and bombed-out buildings, as well as negotiating their way round bustling street markets. Attack helicopters hovered overhead.