Topeka ? Coalition military forces will find weapons of mass destruction and win the war in Iraq, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee predicted Monday.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said that as troops continued their advance toward Baghdad they would find chemical and biological weapons that Saddam Hussein had long denied he possessed. But he said it served no purpose to use the discovery to show up French and German opposition to the war.

“We’re not going to rub their noses in it,” Roberts said. “You just hope over time the problems will pass.”

He was in Kansas for a series of meetings and to present the bronze star to Thomas Martin of Tecumseh, a World War II veteran who served in Europe.

Roberts said many of Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons have been placed underground and are “highly mobile labs” that were developed after the end of weapons inspections that lapsed for five years in the late 1990s.

As the war moves closer to Baghdad, Roberts said the nation should be prepared for casualties and prisoners, a consequence of being at war.

He warned Iraq to comply with international treaties in taking care of coalition prisoners, including Pfc. Patrick Miller of Park City. “The news involving his treatment at the hands of the Iraqi government is very disturbing. It is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention,” he said.

Roberts said the war against terrorist organizations and Iraq were part of the larger effort to make the nation and the world safe. He added the United States had the authority to remove the Iraqi regime following a 1998 Senate resolution given to President Clinton. Further, he said, countless U.N. resolutions following the end of the 1991 war have been ignored.

When the war is over, French, German and United Nations support for the reconstruction will be necessary and expected, Roberts said. However, despite success in humanitarian and peacekeeping, the world body is facing a critical time.

“In terms of enforcing its own resolutions, it’s teetering on the brink of irrelevance,” Roberts said.

He did not think that Americans would lose their resolve to wage war based on the television coverage from the hundreds of journalists embedded with coalition forces.

“Yesterday was not the best day that we have had, in regards to our forces, but we will persevere,” Roberts said.

Roberts said intelligence agencies monitoring terrorist cells have reported conversations have taken a tone of “despair and lament because they know we are gaining the upper hand.” He based that assessment on the efforts in Iraq and recent coalition raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan.