David Kay quit as head of a US hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq saying he did not believe they existed, but the White House said the search would go on.
US President George W. Bush, seeking re-election in November with Iraq a burning campaign issue, urged the UN on Friday to make a quick decision on helping in Washington's planned handover of power to Iraqis in June.
Kay's statement and mounting Iraqi demands for elections as part of the handover raised the political stakes for Bush, who ordered US-led forces to invade Iraq last March after accusing then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction.
"I don't think [weapons of mass destruction] existed," Kay, who had headed the Iraq Survey Group, said in a telephone interview.
"What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last [1991] Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the 90s."
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We remain confident that the Iraq Survey Group will uncover the truth about Saddam Hussein's regime, the regime's weapons of destruction programs."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally on Iraq, also stuck by his stance weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found.
"Our position is unchanged," said a spokesman for Blair.
Although Kay's departure had been expected, the manner of his going had not and opposition Democrats seized on his comments as the US presidential election campaign warmed up.
"It increasingly appears that our intelligence was wrong about Iraq's weapons, and the administration compounded that mistake by exaggerating the nuclear threat and Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda," Senator John Rockefeller said.
"As a result, the United States is paying a very heavy price," Rockefeller said.
Helicopter crash
The latest US military deaths in Iraq occurred when two pilots were killed when their helicopter came down near the northern town of Qayara. The cause of the crash was unknown.
Since US-led forces invaded Iraq in March, 505 US soldiers have died, 349 of them in combat.
Washington blames guerrilla attacks on Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants, but says the number of raids has declined since the former Iraqi president's capture in December.
US officials said US Special Forces had captured a leading figure in Ansar al-Islam, a guerrilla group operating in Iraq that Washington says has ties to al-Qaeda.
Husam al-Yemeni was seized during an operation last week near the town of Fallujah, about 50km west of Baghdad, said one official.
"There's a strong possibility that this guy was involved in some of the major attacks in Iraq," the official said.
Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council who has had close ties to the Bush administration, became the latest leading figure in Iraq to call for direct elections before Washington hands over power.
He said a US plan for indirect elections through caucuses was a "sure fire way to have instability" because it could produce weak leaders who were not representative of Iraqis.
The US wants regional caucuses to appoint a transitional government to steer Iraq to full elections in 2005.
Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims, repressed under Saddam's three decades of iron rule, have staged mass demonstrations to demand elections that could give them greater representation in a country with a volatile mix of religious and ethnic groups.
Pressure on UN
The US says it would be difficult to organize polls before June due to a lack of electoral registers and laws.
Washington, which had previously resisted any major UN role in postwar Iraq, is pressing the UN to send teams to Baghdad to study the feasibility of holding elections and other options. The Governing Council also wants the UN.
"We're hoping for a quick response from the United Nations to the request," McClellan said.
US officials were optimistic UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would send a team. Annan, travelling in Europe, is expected to announce his decision as early as tomorrow.
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