The US acknowledgment virtually confirmed Iraq's charges that UNSCOM was infested with American spies and agents, but administration officials and analysts split hairs about the espionage mechanism.

While denying that the US worked actively with UNSCOM to collect information for purposes of undermining the Iraqi regime, officials tacitly admitted to some media outlets that US intelligence did provide technology and information to UNSCOM to enable it penetrate Saddam Hussein's security apparatus.

At least one television network said US intelligence agencies had used UNSCOM to bug Saddam Hussein's conversations and gain an insight into his security and inner circle.

The linkage between UN intelligence agencies and UNSCOM was also confirmed by Scott Ritter, aformer weapons inspector who quit UNSCOM last year after accusing the Clinton administration of undermining the inspection regime. In interviews to various news outlets, Ritter suggested there existed a methodology by which UN inspectors used US-supplied intelligence tools to track Iraq's concealed weapons programmes. But these may later have been taken over by the US intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan backed off from claims by his advisers that he had concrete evidence about US spying, following a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Wednesday. ``We not only have no convincing evidence of these allegations. We have no evidence of any kind. We only have rumours,'' Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said, after what presumably was a roasting from Washington, which helped Annan to the post in the first place. The story about US spying on Iraq using UNSCOM was first leaked simultaneously to The Washington Post and The Boston Globe early this week by UNofficials claiming to be Annan's confidantes, but the Post compromised the Secretary General by suggesting that he wanted to use the media to expose US, while his advisers said he wanted the media to follow up the story.

With his flank exposed, Annan backpedalled furiously on Wednesday. US officials said that in his talk with Albright, the secretary general ``indicated that he did not agree with the characterisation of his state of mind as reported in various newspapers.''