WASHINGTON, March 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Still unable to find any banned weapons in Iraq, the new leader of the U.S. hunt for the alleged weapons of mass destruction told Congress he intends to focus on Saddam Hussein's "intentions" instead of hidden weapons.

"In its simplest terms, my strategy is to determine the regimes intentions for all the activities ISG has uncovered," Charles Duelfer, leader of the Iraq Survey Group, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, March 30, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Duelfer said the Iraq Survey Group he oversees is looking for a comprehensive picture, not simply an answer to the question: Were there weapons or not?

The new strategy represents a change in direction from the past effort to uncover the alleged hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons as well as secret programs to produce them.

No weapons of mass destruction - the main pretext for invading the oil-rich Arab country - have been found more than 12 months after the U.S. and British forces launched their mass offensive.

In a closed session before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier Tuesday, Duelfer said U.S. weapons hunters in Iraq have found more evidence Saddam's regime had civilian - or "dual use" - factories able to quickly produce biological and chemical weapons, AP reported.

Duelfer said in a prepared statement the search by the 1,200-member ISG had been hampered by the "extreme reluctance" of Iraqi scientists and managers to speak freely and the difficulty of sorting through millions of documents.

"We do not know whether Saddam was concealing WMD in the final years or planning to resume production once sanctions were lifted," he said.

"We do not know what he ordered his senior ministers to undertake. We do not know how the disparate activities we have identified link together."

"In short, obtaining clear, truthful information from the senior Iraqi leadership has been problematic even at this point in time," he said.

"Foreign missile experts" worked in Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions from 1998 until just before the invasion, he said, "They undertook a complete review of the Al-Samoud surface-to-surface missile system, which exceeded U.N. range limits."

"We must determine what Saddam ordered, what his ministers ordered, and how the plans fit together," Duelfer said.

"Were weapons hidden that were not readily available? Was there a plan for a break out production capacity? Were WMD technologies being developed for the missile and UAV programs? When did the leadership want to see results? How would technologies be integrated?" he asked.

The new direction of trying to determine whether the former Iraqi president was actively pursuing the development of banned weapons reflects the Bush administration's evolving public rationale for the war on Iraq, Reuters said.

Initially, the administration said an invasion was necessary to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction that Iraq possessed and was prepared to use. With none uncovered, the White House now says the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis have died, was justified by Saddam's alleged intent to build and use such weaponry, it added.

The failure to find banned weapons in Iraq has emerged as a key political issue ahead of the November presidential election.

Republicans urge patience until the hunt is finished, while Democrats say the lack of banned weapons showed that the White House exaggerated the threat from Iraq to push for war.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on armed services, called on the CIA to declassify Duelfer's status report. Levin said he is "deeply troubled" that the public version leaves out information that casts doubt on the notion that Iraq had an active WMD program, AP said.

For instance, Duelfer's unclassified status report indicates that it's unclear whether Iraq's efforts to obtain aluminum tubes were to develop a uranium enrichment capability. But, Levin said, "you'd get an impression of unlikelihoods" in the classified version.

Levin said the selective use of information in Duelfer's statement raises the same issues the CIA has faced regarding the prewar intelligence on Iraq. "The CIA should not go down that road again," he said.

"Seeing our president joke about WMDs at a comedy function was terrible. How can a thinking, caring human being joke about the lie that led to body bags and broken young men and women? I was appalled," Fran, an American citizen from Burlington, Massachusetts, wrote to CNN protesting.