White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that Washington will be deliberate in reacting to the discovery becauseit is still assessing related information coming out from Iraq.

Scott McClellan, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that the Bush administration was aware of the reports about the discovery and is looking forward to receiving information from the UN inspectors who found the empty warheads.

McClellan, who was accompanying President George W. Bush on a trip to Scranton, refused to make further comments on the findings.

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said earlier Thursday that the empty chemical weapons warheads just discovered in southern Iraq could not amount to "a smoking gun" the United Stated is looking for to prove Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.

"A smoking gun would be if you found a big stockpile with chemicals," the official said.

He said that the site where the UN inspectors found empty warheads was not included in the information which the United States shared with the inspectors.

(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2003)