WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying again to explain the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said on Saturday that suspected arms sites had been looted in the waning days of Saddam Hussein's rule.

"For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

It is believed to be the first time Bush has cited looting to explain the inability of U.S. forces to uncover chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, a U.S. official said.

Bush had previously said weapons may have been destroyed before the war. The U.S. military has been criticized for failing to prevent looting at an Iraqi nuclear facility.

Bush has been widely criticized for misleading the public by asserting that Saddam had stockpiles of unconventional weapons that menaced the world. The allegations were Bush's main justification for bypassing the United Nations and ordering the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed," Bush said. "We are determined to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."

This week, Bush dismissed questions over his reasons for going to war as the work of "historical revisionists."

In his radio speech, he sought to address problems in post-war Iraq, including attacks on U.S. troops and the slow pace of reconstruction.

"American service members continue to risk their lives to ensure the liberation of Iraq," he said, blaming "dangerous pockets of the old regime" and their "terrorist allies" for the attacks. The U.S. military was combating the threats by hunting down Saddam loyalists and "terrorist organizations."

The United States has provided more than $700 million in humanitarian and reconstruction aid for Iraq, Bush said.

With its allies, it was fixing water treatment plants, boosting electricity supplies and vaccinating children. A $100 million U.S. fund, billions of dollars in recovered Iraqi funds and revenues from oil sales will help pay for reconstruction.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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