White House finds Iraqi warheads 'troubling'
Updated: 01:00 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) January 17, 2003

"It is prohibited for Iraq to possess chemical warheads," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said. 
 White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today said President Bush found the discovery of empty chemical warheads in Iraq "troubling and serious." U.N. weapons inspectors are checking today to see if the warheads are accounted for in Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration. 

"The president views this as troubling and serious," Fleischer told reporters a day after the discovery. Noting that a senior Iraqi official said Iraq forgot it had the warheads, Fleischer said the United States wondered "what other mental lapses they are having." (Full story) 

Meanwhile in Baghdad, U.N. weapons inspectors were checking Friday to see if the 11 empty chemical warheads found Thursday were mentioned in last month's 12,000-page Iraqi declaration to the United Nations. 
Tests were under way to see how recently -- if at all -- any of the warheads were loaded with deadly chemicals. Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said inspectors destroyed similar warheads in the 1990s. 

A team of U.N. arms inspectors found the 11 warheads at an ammunition storage area south of Baghdad. A 12th warhead is being evaluated, and all have been described as being in "excellent condition." (Full Story) 

Iraq downplayed the discovery of the warheads, saying the items did not constitute weapons of mass destruction and that they were "forgotten" materials.