United Nations: As Iraq set out to handover its 10,000 page declaration on the status of its weapons of mass destruction, chief UN inspector has said the experts will keep all sensitive material on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons a secret and denied reports that Washington was pressuring the world body's inspectors to spirit Iraqi scientists out of the country in a bid to get information.

The 15-member Council authorised the inspectors to edit the declaration during closed-door consultations and briefing by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on December 6 after it decided that all its members, including the five veto-wielding permanent members, should have access to the same material. A suggestion that the permanent five have access to the entire report did not find favour with the members, diplomats said.

"All the governments are aware that they should not have access to anything that everyone else does not have access to," Blix said as he came out of the meeting. It is unclear when exactly the Council members would get the edited version of the report but Blix is due to meet with the members again early next week, possibly on December 10, during which some indication might be available.

Any parts related to the proliferation of prohibited weapons or "any other sensitive thing, we'll say cannot be circulated to anybody", he told reporters.

Blix also denied reports that Washington was pressuring them to spirit Iraqi weapons scientists out of the country in a bid to get information on banned weapons programme in exchange for asylum, saying, "We are not an abduction agency.

"We're not going to abduct anybody and we are not serving as a defection agency," he said.

Blix said he had not received any direct criticism from the US including during his 16-year term as head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"You need to have information and the information comes from various sources such as intelligence agencies, satellite and media.

"We want to have recommendations from member governments, what they want us to do and we listen to all of them. We are in nobody's pocket," he said.

Blix said he understood that the declaration ran into 10,000 pages, some in English and some in Arabic. The material in Arabic would need to be translated before the inspectors can decide whether any part is sensitive.

The Council agreed to the procedure after discussing the "risks of releasing parts of this declaration that might help to achieve proliferation of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons", Blix said.

Meanwhile, Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri reiterated Baghdad's claim that it did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

"We said again and again that we have no more destruction weapons at all, everything has been destroyed and we have no intention to do that again. If the Americans have this evidence, they have to tell the inspectors in Iraq to go find this evidence," he said.

PTI