Troops find 'powder factory'

American soldiers today found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and documents on how to use chemical weapons at a suspected chemical warfare training site near Baghdad, a US officer said.

The discovery raises the fear that Saddam Hussein may have stored chemical weapons inside Baghdad ready for use as a last-ditch defence against advancing US forces.

Colonel John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

"It is clearly a suspicious site," said Col Peabody.

Troops found thousands of boxes, he said, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

They also discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.

If the white powder is confirmed as a chemical or biological agent the discovery will be the "smoking gun" US and Britain have been hoping to find to justify the invasion of Iraq.

However previous similar discoveries since the war began 16 days ago have proved to be far from conclusive. There is a possibility that this latest discovery consists of a substance for cleaning chemical suits.

The facility was identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. United Nations inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as 18 February.

The facility is part of a larger complex-Qa'a. known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa'a.

During the 1991 Gulf war, it was bombed by US jets.

In a separate development, Romania said it sent an unspecified number of troops trained in responding to chemical, nuclear and biological attack to Kuwait following a request from US-led forces.

Romania has offered a total of 278 non-combat troops and technical help to Washington, similar to offers made by other ex-communist states grateful for US support during the years of Soviet domination and for backing their efforts to join Nato.

"A section of the non-combat troops took off early today aboard American planes from Timisoara air base," said Marcel Iliese, spokesman at the base. A first group of 15 Romanian troops arrived in the Gulf in early March, Iliese said. Seventy more were due to be deployed in the coming days.

He declined to say when other personnel, including medical, engineering and military police, would be sent, saying it depended entirely on when US-led forces asked for them.

Romania, which has opened its airspace to US aircraft, has about 1,000 US troops at an air base near the Black Sea port of Constanta, actingas an "air bridge" for equipment and personnel going to the Gulf.

Bucharest has also offered the US intelligence on Iraq's energy networks, which it helped build during the time of communist rule.

Separately, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news briefing in Qatar that special forces in Iraq's western desert had found what they believed to be a training school for handling nuclear, chemical and biological warfare.

Western intelligence reports had said Qa Qa'a might be the site of Iraqi chemical weapons work, but no such violations were reported by the inspectors. On 1 April, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a statement on Iraqi television, repeated Baghdad's position that it had no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein had decreed such weapons illegal.

Referring to reports that gas masks and other chemical gear had been found elsewhere in the country, Ramadan said the coalition might plant weapons of mass destruction to implicate Iraq.

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here."