MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, Oct 29 (AFP) - Explosives that have gone missing in Iraq and become a major issue in the US election may have been destroyed by US soldiers, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday.
"I think that's a real possibility," he told reporters on the sidelines of President George W. Bush's campaign stop here.
"We don't know the facts. There is new information still coming to light, but we still don't know all the facts. And for someone to draw conclusions without knowing the facts, it shows their reckless disregard," he said, in an apparent attack on Bush's Democratic challenger, John Kerry.
Kerry has made the missing explosives the central theme in his final days of campaigning for the White House, describing the incident as a symbol of President George W. Bush's failures.
Bush, at first slow to react, has accused Kerry of making "wild charges" about the explosives and of saying "anything to get elected."
"Securing and destroying these kind of munitions was a priority for our troops," McClellan declared.
"The Department of Defense released a satellite image showing trucks at the facility within days after the inspectors left. That shows that there was activity going on there in early March," he noted.
While top administration officials have said there is no proof the explosives were at Al-Qaqaa when the US-led invasion was completed in April 2003, a video shot nine days after the fall of Baghdad and aired by a Minnesota television station on Wednesday shows what appears to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing International Atomic Energy Agency seals.
The explosives went missing from the Al-Qaqaa compound, a sprawling facility south of Baghdad.
IAEA teams last visited Al-Qaqaa shortly before the March 19, 2003 US-led invasion. The UN inspectors said they had put 377 tons of high explosives at the site under seal.
US forces moved in and out of the area between April 3 and May 27, 2003, according to the Pentagon.
10/29/2004 16:46 GMT - AFP