The Times said that officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency had complained to US officials last week about the postings of "roughly a dozen" documents from Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear research that contained diagrams, equations and other details for making a nuclear bomb.

The Times cited experts who said the documents "constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb."

One of the documents, running to 51 pages, covered the technical advances of Iraq's early nuclear program, including 18 pages on the development of its bomb design.

The US government posted the bomb-related documents on a website set up last March to make available to the public a huge archive of Iraqi government papers, hoping that the public would help sift through the archive for useful information government translators did not have time to search for.