A U.N. plane left Baghdad on Sunday with a mammoth dossier which Iraq says proves it has no doomsday weapons, despite deep U.S. skepticism backed by a threat of war. The plane flew with some 12,000 documents to Cyprus, a base for the U.N. arms inspectors, where the pages were split into two batches. Some left with inspectors on a plane to Frankfurt on their way to the United Nations in New York.

Other documents would be flown to Austria, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The United Nations had set Sunday as a deadline for Iraq to declare any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The inspectors began hunting in Iraq last month for any such weapons for the first time since 1998.

President Bush, who has made clear Iraq faces war if Washington judges Baghdad has deceived the world, promised that the Iraqi declaration would be studied carefully.

"We will judge the declaration's honesty and completeness only after we have thoroughly examined it, and that will take some time," he said. "The declaration must be credible and accurate and complete."

But a senior U.S. official said Washington had evidence Iraq had retained and even accelerated banned weapons programs.

"I think we have substantial evidence," he said. "Since 1998 there has been a number of pieces of information, intelligence evidence, that suggest that a number of these programs not only continue but have accelerated....There are things of course that we're not going to make public," the official said.

The official suggested that the United States may provide additional intelligence and other support to U.N. inspectors in Iraq, who have said it was needed to do their job.

EXPERT STUDY

The Iraqi declaration will be studied by the IAEA in Vienna and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in New York.

Speaking in Tokyo, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Sunday it would take time to analyze Iraq's dossier and pleaded for his agency to be allowed time to "do a proper job."

U.N. Security Council members have decided to postpone the public release of the Iraqi documents for as long as a week to allow experts to screen it for any military secrets that might help outsiders develop their own doomsday weapons.

Diplomats say it could take a week before the 15 Security Council members get a copy.

U.N. arms inspectors must report to the Security Council by January 26 under U.N. resolution 1441, which threatens Iraq with "serious consequences" if it fails to comply. They can flag any Iraqi violations sooner.

Weapons experts say Baghdad has cooperated with searches at around 20 suspect sites so far.

PHOTO CAPTION

Members of the U.N. arms inspection team carry part of the huge dossier detailing Iraq's weapons programs onto a plane at Saddam airport in Baghdad, December 8, 2002. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)