International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei said UN inspectors should return to Iraq but stayed away from the explosives issue, which emerged in the final weeks of the close election race.

Last month, ElBaradei reported that hundreds of tonnes of explosives had vanished from a depot in Iraq after the invasion of US troops, which caused the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

The announcement led Democratic challenger John Kerry to accuse US President George W. Bush of incompetence in the handling of Iraq after Saddam's departure, with fears the explosives could fall into the hands of insurgents.

Some Bush supporters fired back that the revelation was made in October to undermine his bid for re-election, amid suggestions ElBaradei had been angered by US opposition to his holding a third term as IAEA director.

In his annual address to the UN General Assembly, ElBaradei said that his agency's mandate from the UN Security Council was still in effect, despite the departure from Iraq of UN inspectors in March 2003, just before the war.

"We had found no evidence of the revival of nuclear activities prohibited under relevant Security Council resolutions. Naturally, the international community is reassured that these findings have since been validated," he said.

"It is clearly important to bring the whole question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to closure as early as possible," ElBaradei said, calling for UN inspectors to return to Iraq -- a move so far blocked by Washington.

Bush had cited Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction as a main reason for launching the war but none has been found. US voters will cast their ballots on Tuesday in what polls suggest is a very close presidential race.

The New York Sun reported on Monday that US Secretary of State Colin Powell called ElBaradei on Friday and warned him not to bring up the missing explosives in his General Assembly speech.

A senior US State Department official who asked not to be named told AFP that Powell had spoken with the IAEA chief but said the claim that he had asked ElBaradei not to mention the explosives was "absolutely wrong."

A leading columnist for the New York Times meanwhile said ElBaradei had used "exquisite political timing" in sending Iraq a letter on October 1 recalling the IAEA's "interest" in the missing explosives.

An Iraqi letter of reply indicated the explosives, which had been placed under IAEA seal when UN inspectors were still working in Iraq, were now missing, which set off the media reports.

Times columnist William Safire said that letter had been leaked to a US television network, which he said had planned to report on the revelation on Sunday, just 36 hours before polls were to open for the presidential election.

But the Times went ahead and reported the story of the missing explosives last week.

Safire, one of the few openly pro-Bush voices at the newspaper, accused ElBaradei of trying to manipulate the US election -- and compared such a move to last week's release of a new Osama bin Laden videotape.

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