New York: The US administration, which provided "graphic details", complete with satellite images, of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) last February to UN Security Council, is embarrassed - despite extensive search no barrels of nerve agent and buried or "mobile" bio-weapons labs are surfacing.

"The White House is screaming, 'Find me some WMD," a US State Department official is quoted by 'Time' magazine as saying.

Members of the administration, 'Time' comments, must feel a new bond with UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, since they are now the ones arguing, "these things take time".

For months before the war began, everyone from President George Bush down argued that Saddam Hussein's arsenal of biological and chemical weapons was so dangerous that destroying it was worth a war. They laid claim to information so certain that Secretary of State Colin Powell was able to provide graphic details to a UN audience in February.

However sanguine officials sound in public, 'Time' says, in private the pressure is rising. The Pentagon dispatched an entire brigade - 3,000 troops - to the search and offered $ 200,000 bounties for any WMD uncovered. Local officers were authorized to make payments of $ 2,500 on the spot.

Even the hardliners, the magazine says, concede that they have confirmed absolutely nothing so far.

Barrels of nerve agent have turned out to be pesticide; tip-offs about weapons sites have gone nowhere; the buried or mobile bio-weapons labs have so far failed to surface.

PTI