Former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector Scott Ritter said on Australian radio there was no doubt the United States had access to information compiled by UNSCOM about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

This information was then used in the December bombings of Iraq by the United States and Britain, code-named Operation Desert Fox, he said.

``I think it's quite obvious when you look at the facilities bombed by the United States in Operation Desert Fox that they were targeting locations based upon information that UNSCOM had developed,'' Ritter told SBS Radio.

``I find that reprehensible,'' he said. Chief UN weapons insepctor Richard Butler has rejected allegations his team was involved in spying, while a UN spokesman said yesterday, Secretary GeneralKofi Annan had no evidence for such allegations.

Ritter resigned in August over the conduct of weapons inspections.

His claims echoed two US newspaper reports which said the United States had tapped secret Iraqi communications by using intelligence gathered by Butler's weapons teams.

Meanwhile, the State Department said the United States had worked to help UNSCOM in its search for Iraq's concealed weapons and had not sought specifically to gather information for its own purposes.

``American support was specifically tailored to facilitate UNSCOM, the UN inspectors' mission, and for no other purpose, and was done at the direct request of the UN Special Commission,'' said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

The Washington Post

reported yesterday that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had seen `credible evidence' pointing to UNSCOM's cooperation with US intelligence.

Annan's spokesman however said that the UN Secretary General and his staff had no access to classified US documents and `noevidence of any kind' to suggest that the UN special commission had assisted US intelligence efforts in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke with Annan yesterday to ``ask for an explanation'' in the wake of the report, said Rubin.