VIENNA, April 1 (Islamonline.net & News Agencies) - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stressed Tuesday, April 1, that it and not the United States, was responsible for checking that Iraq did not possess any atomic weapons.

"The IAEA is the sole body with legal authority to verify Iraq's nuclear disarmament," IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.

"The world has learned over three decades that only through impartial, international inspections can credibility be generated. Iraq is no exception to that requirement," he asserted.

ElBaradei's comments came after the Washington Post said the U.S. had set up special military units to seek out the alleged weapons of mass destruction it accuses Iraq of developing, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The Bush administration is determined to conduct the weapons hunt without the U.N. agencies that hold Security Council mandates for the job.

"Administration officials distrust the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the IAEA," the paper said, quoting "disarmament planners" who are also "negotiating contracts with private companies for some of the work".

"White House officials have backed Defense Department efforts to create a substitute organization for UNMOVIC and the Vienna-based IAEA," the report continued, adding that the State Department feared their moves would be opposed by other members of the U.N. Security Council.

Hans Blix, the head of the UNMOVIC, said on Saturday that Washington and London were trying to recruit his inspectors to work on a unilateral weapons search program.

"They have turned to some people who currently work for us and asked them to come down and help. These are our people who come from countries that are engaged in the conflict down there," Blix stressed.

The inspection teams led by ElBaradei and Blix were evacuated from Iraq two days before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, less than four months into the verification mission the United Nations Security Council had asked them to undertake.

ElBaradei, who on March 7 said U.N. experts had found no sign of any prohibited nuclear activity at any inspected site in Iraq, asserted Tuesday that inspection teams hoped to continue their work once the war was over.

"The IAEA mandate in Iraq is still valid and has not changed," he said. "Our operation is interrupted because of hostilities.

"We had made good progress since resuming inspections in Iraq in November and we stand ready, subject to Security Council guidance, to resume our work after the war and to provide the ongoing assurances sought by the Security Council that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program."

"Impartial and independent verification is at the core of international efforts over the last 30 years to underpin the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons," he said, adding that IAEA inspectors had not yet been approached by Washington to work for the United States.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney responded by saying that he thought ElBaradei was wrong in his conclusions.

While IAEA inspectors were able to dismantle Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program following the first Gulf war in 1991, U.S. officials claimed IAEA experts failed to uncover whet they alleged was Iraqi program before the war.

The fact that inspectors " haven't found weapons of mass destruction diminishes the impact or the legitimacy of the war," Annan said

"The Council has not endorsed this war," Annan told reporters, adding that "several reasons" had been given for the refusal to give backing.

More than 80 nations spoke during a public session of the U.N. Security Council on the war, mostly to criticize the United States and Britain.