Thousands of people carrying Korans and waving banners demonstrated outside a Baghdad mosque on Friday demanding the United States leave Iraq as Washington says it's sending a 1,000-strong force to Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).In the first Friday prayers since U.S. tanks drove to the heart of the Iraqi capital last week, Imam Ahmed al-Kubaisi said in his traditional before Friday noon prayer speech the United States invaded Iraq to defend Israel and denied that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

His followers poured out of the mosque after prayers chanting anti-U.S. slogans and waving banners that read "No to America. No to Secular State. Yes to Islamic State."

US Steps UP Search for WMDs

In Washington, Pentagon officials said the United States is sending a 1,000-strong force to Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD.

The CNN television network quoted US defense officials as saying the "Iraq Survey Group" would probably be led by a general and would consist of military personnel, government intelligence analysts, civilian scientists and private contractors.

Initial elements of the WMD team are already on the ground in Iraq and the full contingent should be operational within two weeks, CNN quoted a Pentagon official as saying.

The survey team will focus on putting a larger number of personnel into Iraq to conduct a more organized search for WMDs based on intelligence leads, the network said.

This latest effort to locate the elusive WMDs, said CNN, underscores the growing Pentagon view that the United States no longer expects to find them on its own, but will have to offer rewards to Iraqis to draw out information on where to look.

The report was in line with statements earlier Thursday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to a town meeting at the Pentagon when he said, "I think what will happen is, we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it.

"It is not like a treasure hunt, where you just run around looking everywhere hoping you find something," said Rumsfeld.

"The (UN weapons) inspectors didn't find anything, and I doubt that we ill. What we will do is find the people who will tell us."

US forces have yet to unearth any of the weapons of mass destruction Washington claimed Saddam's regime was developing and which it used to justify going to war on March 20.

Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix told the BBC that his inspectors could give credibility to any discovery of banned weapons made by US or British troops in Iraq.

But Washington said it was not yet time for the inspectors to return to Iraq.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi Shiite Muslims are seen during morning prayers at Baghdad's Shiite shrine in Kazemiya, Thursday April 17, 2003. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)