Washington, June 26: The US State Department has disputed the CIA's claim that tractor trailers found in Iraq were mobile laboratories used for making biological weapons, officials said. Quoting a secret internal document form the Department's intelligence division, the 'New York Times' reported that the office deemed it premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons programme, as President George W Bush has done.

In a report to the White House, the CIA had said that the trailers and a mobile laboratory truck seized near Baghdad in April were "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program".

Bush had on May 29 declared that the weapons banned under UN resolutions had been uncovered in Iraq.

"We discovered weapons-manufacturing facilities that were condemned by the United Nations," the President said adding: "Biological laboratories described by our Secretary of State to the whole world that were not supposed to be there, that are a direct violation of the UN resolutions, have been discovered," he said.

The disclosure of the memorandum is the clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the CIA and the defence intelligence agency, the daily said.

Bureau Report