ROCHESTER, Minnesota, Oct, 27 (AFP) - John Kerry on Wednesday demanded answers from President George W. Bush, not "political attacks" as he accused him of "dodging and bobbing and weaving" over missing explosives in Iraq.
Kerry fired Wednesday's first shot on what is becoming an increasingly incendiary issue in the final week of the US election campaign during a rally in Iowa.
Then three hours later, after flying on to Minnesota, he pounced on Bush's first comments on the controversy, in which the president accused the veteran senator of throwing around "wild charges."
"Mr President, for the sake of our brave men and women in uniform, for the sake of those troops who are in danger," Kerry said in Rochester, Minnesota sports arena packed with at least 10,000 supporters.
"Because of your mistakes, you owe Americans real answers about what happened, not just political attacks."
"Your administration was warned, you were put on notice but you didn't put these explosives on priority lists, you didn't think it was important.
"You didn't give the troops the instructions they need, you didn't guard the ammunition dumps and now our troops are at greater risk."
The UN nuclear watchdog this week said the 350 tonnes of explosives went missing from a weapons dump south of Baghdad some time after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003 by the US-led invasion.
But Bush said it was still unclear what happened to the cache, which the UN warned could be used in conventional bombs or to trigger a nuclear advice.
"The senator is making wild charges about missing explosives," said Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania.
"Think about that: The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts."
"Unfortunately, that's part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected," said the president, whom Kerry has accused of incompetent war planning in the wake of media revelations that the explosives went missing.
Bush did not directly address the substance of the claims, saying only that the government was investigating a "number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site."
"This investigation is important, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as your commander in chief," said Bush.
Kerry earlier accused the White House of "dodging and bobbing and weaving in their usual effort to avoid responsibility, just as they've done every step of the way in our involvement in Iraq."
"Vice President Dick Cheney who is becoming the Chief Minister of Disinformation, echoed that it's not the administration's fault and even criticised those who raised the subject," he said in Iowa, where he is running neck-and-neck with Bush.
"This is a growing scandal and the American people deserve a full and honest explanation of how it happened and what the president is going to do about it."
A top Iraqi science official said Wednesday the 350 tonnes of high explosives could not have been smuggled out of the military site south of Baghdad before Saddam Hussein was ousted.
Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall."
He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that "not even a shred of paper left the sites."
"The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."
The dump, Al-Qaqaa, is 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad.
The bulk of materials in question include HMX (high melting point explosive) and RDX (rapid detonation explosive), which can be used in major bombing attacks, making missile warheads and detonating nuclear weapons.

10/27/2004 19:03 GMT - AFP