The right-of-centre newspaper said it understood British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has called for patience in the search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, has been told that rocket motors for the missiles have been found.

Sources told the paper that in the past few weeks weapons experts discovered that the Abu Ghraib military base near Baghdad was developing a weapon with a range of about 960 kilometres (600 miles).

Under limits set by the UN Security Council, Iraq was allowed to missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometres only, The Times said.

Blair, under growing pressure over allegations his office exaggerated intelligence reports to make Saddam Hussein's regime appear more menacing, has hinted that further evidence of Baghdad's secret programme has begun to emerge but has yet to be made public.

However, Whitehall sources told The Times: "What we need to find is firm evidence of a chemical weapons programme, because much emphasis was placed on the chemical threat. We need to discover why Saddam did not use chemical weapons against coalition forces."

A powerful parliamentary committee decided late Tuesday to probe Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq, amid claims the government had embellished intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the conflict.

The left-wing Daily Mirror tabloid reported Wednesday that troops hunting for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction had searched 87 "prime sites" in Iraq, but found nothing.

The paper, which opposed the US-led war, said that a 100-strong team of British military specialists would join a new American-led hunt for weapons evidence involving 1,400 personnel belonging to the Iraqi Survey Group after the apparent failure of the current search.

SPACE.WIRE