With no single weapon of mass destruction (wmd) yet uncovered in Iraq, US and British leaders are now pointing the finger at neighboring Syria, suggesting that is where the banned arms could be found.

"There are some important questions for Syria to answer, which includes these questions of chemical weapons," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters Tuesday at US Central Command's war base in Qatar.

As military troops scoured Iraq for what Washington has termed "smoking guns", Centcom conceded that, to date, nothing has been uncovered.

"Efforts are ongoing. We had some preliminary examinations that occurred that did not prove to be weapons of mass destruction, we found some things that were potentially agricultural," Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said Tuesday.

But he said he was certain that "we are going to find something as time goes on."

General Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in Iraq, has no doubts either.

"Whether we'll turn out at the end of the day to find them in one of the two or three thousand sites that we already know about, or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will actually tell us there's another site I'm not sure, but I am sure there are weapons in the country, yes," he said in a television interview Sunday.

Also at Centcom, Captain Frank Thorp said the process could take months.

"We have to remember this is a regime that had 12 years to hide the stuff," he said in reference to the end of the Gulf war. "They were fairly effective in hiding it from numerous inspections."

Thorp said he expected that with the situation now normalizing in Iraq, an increasing number of people would come forward with tips on where to find the banned weapons.

The US authorities have offered a reward for anyone giving information leading to the discovery of wmds in Iraq.

Just how much money is involved remains unclear, with officials describing the amount as "adequate" and Thorp saying: "I think people that need to know will know."

He said all 180,000 troops on the ground in Iraq were involved in the painstaking search, and Brooks said an entire brigade devoted itself to detailed examinations of potential sites "with the right knowledge and the right equipment."

Australia announced Tuesday a team of 12 specialists would join them within a week.

The Australian government admitted this could trigger criticism because it would not be sanctioned by the United Nations.

"We are not so much interested in how others might perceive the process," Defense Minister Robert Hill Hill said in Canberra. "We're interested in a process that can best assure us that the threat of weapons of mass destruction has been removed."

At Centcom, Australian Colonel Pup Elliott said it was not clear how long the experts would be in Iraq, but said that such missions typically lasted three to six months.

Will the troops and the experts hit the mother lode?

"I don't know," former chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler told Australia's ABC Radio on Tuesday.

"The Iraqis could have destroyed them, or hidden them, or moved them across the border ... to Syria," said Butler who headed a UN team in Iraq from 1997 until 1999.

Saddam Hussein's top weapons advisor, General Amer al-Saadi, again insisted while surrendering to US troops on Saturday that the ousted regime did not have arms of mass destruction.

SPACE.WIRE