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UNITED NATIONS, Thursday (Reuters) With 51 weapons experts still on staff, the U.N. commission in charge of monitoring Iraq's unconventional arms made clear on Wednesday it was well placed to uncover any remaining dangerous materials in Iraq.

In a report to the Security Council, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) said it was still updating its extensive database, especially on biological arms and missiles, and analyzing imagery from ongoing commercial satellite overflights. The report said, for example, there was circumstantial evidence that before the war Iraq was working on a two-stage rocket that would have had an illegal range, but that closer investigation was needed.

The United States has barred the commission from going to Iraq and instead set up an Iraq Survey Group, headed by David Kaye, who led inspection teams in 1991 for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The report, written by Demetrius Perricos, the acting UNMOVIC executive chairman, said no written materials from Kaye had been submitted to any of the U.N. inspection bodies. But judging from excerpts that had been made public, much of the material was familiar to UNMOVIC and contained in its past reports, Perricos said.

"The general impression from the statements released is that most of the findings...relate to complex subjects familiar to UNMOVIC, both through declarations and semi-annual reports provided by Iraq, and by correspondence, meetings and inspection reports by U.N teams," the report said.

Perricos has said he doubted that Saddam Hussein had large stocks of weapons of mass destruction. But the report also pointed to unanswered questions in accounting for materials like anthrax, which Iraq said it had destroyed without giving proof.

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