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New York – Former United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq have discovered traces of chemical substances, including the poisonous gas phosgene, in their office in New York and have called on US authorities to investigate, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“There is no immediate risk or dangers and the UNMOVIC staff is still working on the premise,” UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

She said the inspectors discovered two small metal and glass vials with liquid substances that were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility Al Muthanna in 1996. The inventory showed one of the vials contains phosgene suspended in oil.

The other vial contains nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) reference standards which were used to calibrate chemical analytical equipment.

“Following discovery of these items, UNMOVIC chemical weapons experts sealed the packages and placed them in a safe, which was then isolated in a secured room,” Okabe said. “The experts also tested the environment surrounding the packages using a portable chemical detector and found no concentration of toxic vapours in the air.”

Phosgene is a poisonous gas and major industrial chemical used to make plastics and pesticides. It is converted into liquid for shipping and storage.

Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a choking agent and was responsible for the majority of deaths caused by chemical agents during the war, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is not found naturally, but can be formed when chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds are exposed to high temperatures. At room temperature, phosgene becomes a poisonous gas that can harm the skin, eyes and lungs.

The UN said the phosgene substance discovered measured in “gram quantities” suspended in oil, calling it “an old generation chemical warfare agent.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the chemicals were discovered Friday and should not have been stored at the New York office.

“I’m sure that there are going to be a lot of red-faced people over at the UN trying to figure out how they got there,” he said.

Inspectors of the UN monitoring agency known as UNMOVIC were charged with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led military invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and compiled a huge archive of materials found in Iraq and brought back to New York for study.

Okabe said the UN informed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of the discovery and the FBI sent agents to investigate.

The group of inspectors has been disbanded, but a staff of 17 experts remained in charge of the archives and inventory at their office in New York. During their years of intense work in Iraq, which began after Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the inspectors did not any weapons of mass destruction.

But US President George W Bush used the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as one of the justifications to sent US troops to Iraq in 2003.