WASHINGTON, March 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The work of US weapons huntersin Iraq will continue but their focus will shift to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's intentions to develop weapons of mass destruction, the chief US weapons inspector said Tuesday.

    "In its simplest terms, my strategy is to determine the regime's intentions for all the activities ISG has uncovered," Charles Duelfer, leader of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Duelfer was put in charge of the ISG of about 1,200 to 1,400 personnel, after David Kay, his predecessor, resigned in January and said he had concluded that Iraq possessed no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons before the US-led war on Iraq last year.

    Deulfer said the team regularly received reports of hidden weapons, "but we haven't found any at this point in time."

    The weapons searchers were looking for weapons, production equipment and Saddam's decisions to sustain a capability, "but we have not found existing stocks of weapons as some had expected," Duelfer said.

    The United States has tried hard to find Iraq's hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons and programs to produce them, the main rationale it cited for invading Iraq, and the new strategy reflects the administration's evolving public rationale for the war.

    "Ultimately what we want is a comprehensive picture, not just simply answering questions -- were there weapons, were there not weapons?" Duelfer told reporters after testifying behind closed doors.

    The search in Iraq had been hampered by the reluctance of Iraqiscientists and managers to speak freely, said Deulfer, who has been in Iraq for six weeks.

    The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is turning intoa major political issue in the country before the presidential election in November. While Republicans urged patience, Democrats accused the Bush administration of exaggerating Iraq's threat to push for war. Enditem