WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- US experts wrapped up their search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq last month, and their earlier report that there were no such weapons there will likely stand to the end, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

    Experts who served with the search group said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas, the report said.

    According to the report, the leader of the group, CIA special adviser Charles Duelfer, has returned home, and other experts havereturned to CIA headquarters in Virginia.

    An interim report submitted by the group to the US Congress last September will stand as the final conclusions of the search and the final version will be published this spring, the report said, quoting a senior intelligence official.

    In the interim report, Duelfer and his teammates contradicted nearly every pre-war assertion of the Bush administration to initiate the Iraq war and topple Saddam Hussein after four months of hunt, concluding that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons and its nuclear program had decayed before the war.

    Disappointed by the conclusion, the Bush administration was reluctant to call off the hunt, insisting that the weapons might be moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country, but experts said the possibility is "very small." Enditem