The UN nuclear watchdog that investigated alleged Iraqi weapons programmes before the war said Friday that it has asked for a copy of a report by a 1 200-strong US search team which says no weapons were found in Iraq.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "still has an inspection mandate in Iraq both under UN Security Council resolutions and under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to ensure that Iraq has no nuclear weapons-related activities," IAEA spokesperson Mark Gwozdecky told AFP.

"We, therefore, expect that Dr Kay's findings will be shared with us ...to enable us to fulfil our responsibilities," said Gwozdecky, referring to the report by David Kay, the head of the US team scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

The US has not let IAEA inspectors back into Iraq to resume their monitoring activities since US forces toppled Saddam Hussein in a war they began last March.

Kay, who was part of the former IAEA team in Iraq, said in testimony to the US Congress on Thursday that the US has since the war found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite "substantial evidence" that Saddam intended to make chemical and biological arms.

Kay appealed for up to nine months more to complete his work, and President George W Bush has asked Congress for $600-million to fund Kay's search, on top of the reported $300-million already spent.

A Western diplomat at the IAEA said the Kay report was "written in a way that is contrary to the way IAEA inspectors work".

"It's largely a set of statements and testimony from individual Iraqis which seem to be speculative in that there does not appear to be supporting evidence," the diplomat said.

"There are a lot of 'coulds' and 'may' and 'might haves.' But the IAEA works on the basis of what it can verify," the diplomat said.

He said the IAEA was anxious to see the findings on which the report was based.

He added that "even if we were to believe everything" in the Kay report "there's very little that indicates substantial difference from what the IAEA found in Iraq," when it declared it had no proof that Saddam had tried to develop nuclear weapons after losing the first Gulf War in 1991.

"The IAEA was aware of the possibility of bits and pieces of activity but again no evidence of a program, let alone actual weapons work," the diplomat said of the decade of IAEA inspections in Iraq.

He said the $900-million total the Bush administration wants to see allocated to Kay's work in Iraq "represents about four times the entire annual budget of the IAEA for its inspection work around the world”. – Sapa-AFP.