After a tip-off from an Iraqi source in Saddam Hussein?s hometown of Tikrit, yesterday, the troops in armoured vehicles raided a farm by the Tigris river, hoping to find the alleged stash of rocket-propelled grenades, often used against US convoys.

Since the war which toppled Saddam in April, US forces have mounted hundreds of raids on the suspected hideouts and weapons hoards of Iraqi guerrillas who attack them daily. They have uncovered dozens of arms caches across Iraq, especially in the so-called ?Sunni Triangle? ? the heartland of support for Saddam which stretches west from Baghdad and north to Tikrit.

But after months of searching, no evidence has been found of Saddam?s alleged weapons of mass destruction, cited by Washington as justification for the March invasion of Iraq.

They swooped at dawn yesterday, arriving in a cloud of dust kicked up by their armoured Humvees and Bradleys. Rifles at the ready, the soldiers raided a row of houses by the farm yard, pulling out around 20 men in white or grey robes who were made to sit on the ground.

One by one they were called up for questioning by the unit commander, aided by a translator, a former Iraqi exile who has returned home to work with the US-led occupation force.

No one had much to say. Undeterred, American soldiers, joined by more than a dozen recruits from the Iraqi Civil Defence Force, a US-trained paramilitary organisation, fanned out across the orchard in search of weapons.

Carrying one of the farm workers as a guide, the all-terrain Humvees bounced through groves of lime, pear, pomegranate and fig trees, an irrigated oasis of green in a desert landscape.

An elderly woman dressed in black was pulling up long grass from a pathway, but had no information to give. The convoy pressed on and stopped at a clearing by the side of the track, where the sandy ground looked to be freshly turned over.

Blind luck

Some of the Iraqi militiamen began to dig with shovels, while a US soldier scanned the ground with a metal detector. Within half an hour, 1 000 rounds of rifle and machinegun ammunition were discovered just beneath the surface.

?A lot of the time it?s just blind luck,? said Sergeant Gilbert Nail of the US Army?s 4th Infantry Division. ?But you?d normally find weapons hidden close to the road or in sight of a house so they can get to them easily.?

Digging his toe into the sand, a cameraman covering the raid found some soft ground in which a machinegun was quickly unearthed.

But there was no sign of the alleged rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), which an Iraqi informant had said were buried in the orchard. RPGs are a favoured weapon of Iraqi guerrillas, who used them to kill three US soldiers near Tikrit last week.

Another hour passed and the operation was called off. Major Mike Rauhut said despite the scanty haul, the raid had been a success.

?We found some small arms, but more important is the intelligence we got from the farmers,? he said. ?They told us things about the man who owns the place, who wasn?t there, and we?ll continue to search.?

Rosalind Russell

UN general assembly

French media agree Chirac upstaged Bush

French media all agreed yesterday their man stole the show at the United Nations. French President Jacques Chirac used the General Assembly to give President George W. Bush a ticking-off over Iraq. ?On the clap--meter, it was Jacques Chirac who won,? concluded the Liberation daily, contrasting the sustained applause for Chirac on Tuesday with the polite ovation that followed Bush?s speech.

Chirac denounced the US decision to wage war against Iraq without UN backing as having plunged the body into one of the most trying periods of its history. He said it had ?shaken the multilateral system? that France argues should run the world.

To Bush?s call on ?nations of goodwill? to rally round the United States? efforts to rebuild Iraq, Chirac countered that there was no alternative to the United Nations as ?the heart of the global democracy that is so necessary in our times?.

?Probably never have two heads of state from essentially the same camp stood up and expressed views of the world so radically opposed to each other,? said French radio commentator Bernard Guetta.

While there was no doubting the world dominance of the United States, Chirac had revelled in the ?freedom to oppose (that dominance) and win the ear of the world?, Guetta added. Chirac, telling his UN General Assembly audience what many in it enjoy hearing, said it was time to reform the United Nations by offering smaller nations more say in its decisions. With such words, France is seeking to win backers in the

diplomatic battle over a draft UN resolution on how power and influence will be carved up in postwar Iraq. Earlier during his trip, Chirac confirmed France would not run the risk of undermining the UN Security Council anew by using its veto to defeat any resolution it did not like.

But for the time being, the concessions stop there. Chirac stuck firmly to French calls for an immediate move to re-establish Iraqi?s sovereignty over their country, together with a timetable for handing over executive power within months, a plan Washington insists is unrealistic. And while France has indicated it could offer ancillary help in Iraq, such as training Iraqi troops, Chirac remained deafeningly silent on Bush?s call to send troops there. ?Decidely, the quarrel between France and the United States is still far from being just a memory,? noted Le Figaro daily.