Insurgents were seeking chemical munitions found by Polish

WARSAW, Poland -- Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

But in Iraq, the U.S. military said trace amounts of the nerve agent found in a cache of rockets dating back to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war were so deteriorated they would have had "little to no impact if used by insurgents."

Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.

"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said.

He refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.

The warheads all contained cyclosarin, multinational force commander Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek said.

"Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable," Bieniek said.

But the U.S. military statement said: "Due to the deteriorated state of the rounds, and small quantity of remaining agent, these rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces."

The munitions were found in a bunker in the Polish sector, but Polish officials refused to be more specific.

In May, a booby-trapped artillery shell apparently filled with the sarin nerve agent exploded alongside a Baghdad road but caused no serious injuries to the U.S. forces who discovered it. At the time, officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam Hussein's regime.