chemicals found.

Will not be long before more evidence is found.

US military experts hunting for illegal weapons in Iraq have found precursors to a banned toxic agent, and are calling it the most important such discovery to date, the New York Times reported.

A US military team found the substance buried in the sand, thanks to information provided by an Iraqi scientist who claimed to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons' program for more than a decade, the Times reported.

The Times envoy who reported the story, Judith Miller, was permitted to watch the scientist showing the sites to US officials only from a distance.

She said she was not allowed by the US military to identify the chemicals or to interview the Iraqi scientist.

She was made to wait three days before publishing the information, and was required to submit her report to military officials for review.