United Nations ? U.N. arms inspectors are ready to get back into Iraq to finish the job of looking for any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons but don’t want to work under a new U.S.-led disarmament effort.

“We’re not dogs on a leash,” said chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who said it was key his teams remained independent. He said U.N. teams would be willing to confirm any discoveries of banned weapons the Americans report, but repeatedly noted that U.S. troops haven’t found any such weapons thus far.

The Bush administration said one of the war’s main missions was to rid Iraq of the weapons it believed Saddam was concealing. With U.S. troops controlling most of Iraq, Washington has all but replaced the U.N. inspections with its own search for banned Iraqi weapons.

The U.S. teams have visited between three and four dozen sites, a Pentagon official said. So far they haven’t found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction but some samples taken Thursday at the Tallil air base needed further testing, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iraq acknowledged years ago that it had stored chemical artillery shells there during the Gulf War.

But Saddam Hussein’s regime had said at least since 1998 that it no longer had such weapons programs.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a failed effort to win international support for the war, told the United Nations in February that U.S. intelligence proved Iraq had such weapons.

But on Thursday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that U.S. troops would need to rely on the Iraqis to find the weaponry.

“I don’t think we’ll discover anything, myself,” Rumsfeld said. “I think what will happen is we’ll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something.”

No one knows that better than Blix, who came under heavy criticism at times from U.S. officials angered that he wasn’t backing their position.

“We had credibility and we didn’t lend it to their contentions, and I think that we were right and I think so far nothing has proved us wrong,” Blix told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.