"We'll find them (WMDs). And it's just going to be a matter of time to do so," said Bush

CRAWFORD, Texas, May 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – It was just a "matter of time" before U.S. troops find banned Iraqi arms, U.S. President George W. Bush said late Saturday, April 3, following a meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Bush and Howard, who won a coveted invitation to the "Prairie Chapel" ranch by being one of four leaders to send combat troops to Iraq, traded compliments during a chummy press conference, in which Bush thanked Howard for his backing to oust Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. 

"You're kind of like a Texan," Bush paid Howard the "biggest compliment" possible in his home state.

"We'll find them (WMDs). And it's just going to be a matter of time to do so," Bush told reporters.

Former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, interrogated since his surrender last week, "didn't know how to tell the truth when he was in office, he doesn't know how to tell the truth as a captive," said Bush.

Bush downplayed hopes that top Saddam aides now in U.S. custody would quickly reveal the location of alleged Iraqi chemical and biological arms.

"Iraq's the size of the state of California. It's got tunnels, caves, all kinds of complexes," said Bush.

The prime minister has so far ruled out sending troops or police to Iraq as part of a post-war security force, but has agreed to send a contingent of Air Force air control specialists to help run Baghdad airport.

Bush said he and Howard had discussed Middle East peace efforts, the North Korean crisis, and how to counter "the threats that emanate out of Indonesia" but offered no details.

Howard said progress towards ending violence between the Palestinian and Israel was "very important to consolidating what has been achieved in Iraq, and building on the message of freedom that came out of the operation in Iraq."

The short roster of world leaders invited to Crawford includes Britain's Tony Blair, China's Jiang Zemin, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

Iraqi Nuclear Site Looted

In another development, a specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing, The Washington Post reported Sunday, May 4.

The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to "claim" that the war had dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control.

Seven suspected sites have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact.

Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991.

It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel, while experts said that it was not suitable to produce a fission bomb, the daily added.

U.S. authorities told the Post that they did not know what was missing, because of an ongoing conflict between the Bush administration and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as a dispute within the administration about how much to involve the IAEA in Iraq.

The first hint that dangerous isotopes (chemical substances) might be loose came when a monitor began beeping in the rubble. In a shallow hole protected by sandbags, the men found a yellow crate, shaped like a toolbox that bore the warning, "CAUTION RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL."

A nuclear-trained special operator named Rick -- all the men except Beckett gave only first names -- pulled out a suitcase-size detector. The box was throwing gamma rays, but nothing too dangerous.

Another find by the team came in black corrugated metal sheds next to a low stone storage area, a site known to U.N. inspectors as Building 55.

The IAEA lists those structures as "mechanical workshops and stores."

Last month, U.S. military officials said that an “unidentified” Iraqi scientist claimed that the Iraqi regime had destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment on the eve of the U.S.-led war on Iraq in what was seen as a bid to save Bush's face, who came under press diatribe recently for failing to give hard evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.