Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix says although Iraq has left unanswered many questions about its unconventional weapons one should not assume such dangerous arms still exist.
Making his final report to the Security Council before retiring, Blix said on Thursday he had not found Iraq resumed its weapons of mass destruction production, although this did not mean such programmes did not exist.
But he said it was "not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for".
Blix, who leaves his post in June as executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, has been sidelined by the United States as it attempts to explain why it has not found dangerous weapons in Iraq after some 11 weeks of searches since the war.
He appealed to the 15-member body to have an "effective presence of international inspectors" back in Iraq to serve as as deterrent against any efforts to reactivate the dangerous weapons programmes.