Baghdad, Iraq ? U.S. soldiers, acting on a tip, seized top-secret code equipment and piles of Iraqi intelligence documents in a raid Saturday on a community center. The find, including references to a nuclear program, is being sent to senior intelligence analysts to look for information on Iraq’s banned weapons programs.

“It’s potentially significant,” said Capt. Ryan McWilliams, an intelligence officer with the Army’s 1st Armored Division, who examined the documents. He said there were “potentially some pretty strong documents regarding the intelligence service.”

The haul came on the sixth day of a nationwide sweep to seize weapons and insurgents. In the past week, the military has conducted 90 raids and netted 540 suspects, a coalition spokesman said. No figure was available on how many had been released.

Since the start of the invasion in March, U.S. forces have been combing Iraq for clues to the country’s banned nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. The searches have so far failed to prove that Iraq harbored the unconventional weapons that President Bush cited as the main justification for war.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush defended initial administration claims about the existence of the weapons but did not promise they would be found, as he had on other occasions until recently. The president said documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned “in the regime’s final days.”

“We are determined to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, no matter how long it takes,” Bush said.

Seeking Saddam

The search for Saddam and his sons also has been fruitless so far.

Saturday, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Saddam’s top aide, captured Monday, has told U.S. interrogators that the deposed leader and his two sons survived the war and were hiding north of Baghdad.

The claim, attributed to Abid Hamad Mahmoud al-Tikriti, could not be verified, an unidentified U.S. defense official was quoted as saying.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., confirmed Mahmoud had told U.S. interrogators, “There is every likelihood that Saddam is alive.”

U.S. equipment in stash

Saturday’s raid in Baghdad’s Azamiyah district nabbed dozens of military radios, cryptography equipment and mapmaking plotters. Most equipment appeared to be old. It included equipment made by U.S. and European companies like Motorola and Thompson.

McWilliams said informants told him Iraqi intelligence officials stashed the goods there in the last days of Saddam’s regime. He added that the stash would be handed over to intelligence analysts at the division’s headquarters at Baghdad International Airport to see if they relate to banned weapons programs.

Soldiers with flashlights examined documents strewn across the floor of two rooms above a funeral parlor. An Arabic interpreter pointed out Top Secret and Personal markings.

One document, dated Feb. 7, 1998, appeared to be a manifest for secure communications equipment. The memo, sent from the National Security Council of Iraq, was addressed to the Iraqi Nuclear Organization, with a carbon to the Mukhabarat, the secret intelligence service.

Securing Iraq

To help maintain security in postwar Iraq, U.S. officials will soon announce the creation of a new Iraqi army that will be open to soldiers of the former regime, the coalition spokesman said.

“It’s going to be an army, not a secret police. It’s going to be professional, not political. … And it will be open to former members of the Iraqi military,” he said.

After Saddam’s ouster, the entire Iraqi military was dismissed. Iraqi police officials say that former soldiers may be behind some attacks on U.S. forces, and disgruntled ex-officers have been staging demonstrations demanding their salaries.

Meanwhile, an estimated 2,000 Iraqi Shiites staged a demonstration outside the gate of the U.S. political and military headquarters.

“We want an honest government, not thieves,” read one banner among the throng. “Iraq should be ruled by no one but its people,” read another. American soldiers on Wednesday shot and killed two protesters after a similar demonstration by former Iraqi soldiers turned into a stone-throwing melee.

A three-member delegation was allowed into the compound to present demands for the speedy creation of an Iraqi-led government and the release of war prisoners.

After the negotiators emerged, Raed al-Kazimi, a senior Shiite leader, told The Associated Press that the Americans “agreed in principle to some of the demands.” But he said the Shiite leadership will take action if the Americans don’t live up to their word. He did not elaborate.