World IN BRIEF : IRAQ : Poison Gas Question to Await Lab Tests

U.N. experts found no clear-cut evidence that Iraq attacked dissident Shiite Muslims in Iraq’s southern marshes with poison gas, but a final conclusion will require lengthy laboratory tests, a U.N. statement. “No immediate evidence of the use of chemical weapons was obtained,” said a written statement by the U.N. commission that monitors Iraq’s defense industries under the Gulf War cease-fire accords. The statement was issued after the U.N. team visited Iraq’s southern marshes Friday and Saturday. A conclusion that Iraq did use chemical weapons would be a powerful setback to Iraq’s efforts to get economic sanctions eased and the oil embargo lifted. Iraq is known to have used chemical weapons on several occasions in the 1980s.