Kay, in a briefing with reporters after Powell and Bush spoke, said the Iraqi scientist who had the vial had been given it for safekeeping at his home by another, more senior scientist, in 1993. The scientist initially had other samples, most of which he quickly returned because of concerns for his family's safety.

"He was actually storing them in his refrigerator," Kay said. "He had small children."

Although tests showed that the one vial of bacteria that the scientist kept was still viable, Kay offered no evidence it had been used in a weapons program during the last decade. -->

Kay also offered a number of theories as to why no weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq, among them that weapons are in the country but are very well hidden or that weapons existed but were moved outside of Iraq.

Kay said it's possible Saddam didn't have any weapons but tried to bluff people in order to look stronger than he actually was. He said it's also possible that Saddam's scientists were fooling Saddam and were too afraid to tell him he didn't have any weapons.

The weapons inspector said Iraqis who have been interviewed by his team have provided information pointing toward each one of those theories.

As details of Kay's report continued to emerge, Bush shrugged off polls showing rising doubts about whether the war was worth the costs. "Sometimes the American people like the decisions I make, sometimes they don't." he told reporters. "But they need to know I make tough decisions, based upon what I think is right, given the intelligence I know."

But Democrats, already hammering the president over his $87 billion request for military and rebuilding operations in Iraq, quickly latched onto Kay's interim report as further proof that the attack on Iraq was ill-advised.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, emerging from a briefing with Kay, said it was "clear to me that there was no imminence of a threat for weapons of mass destruction," as the White House had claimed.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, after a separate meeting with Kay on Friday, said the report reinforced the need to look into the reasons prewar intelligence "could have been so far off and ... whether or not it was exaggerated or whether or not it was hyped, either by the intelligence community or by the users of that intelligence."

Kay, who served as the U.N.'s chief nuclear weapons inspector in 1991, said it would take an additional six to nine months for the 1,200 people under his command to complete their work. Congressional sources say the administration has asked Congress for an additional $600 million for the project.

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Associated Press writer Jim Abrams contributed to this report