SOFIA (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Thursday Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which inspectors have failed to find, were carefully hidden but Hoshiyar Zebari said he was confident they could be discovered.

"I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward," Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, told a news conference in Sofia. "They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated."

The United States and Britain cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological arms as their main reason for invading the country last March and toppling Saddam. But no such weapons have so far come to light despite intensive searches.

Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said on Wednesday "we were almost all wrong" about the issue and it was "highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons" in Iraq.

But Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said: "We as Iraqis have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons of mass destruction against us. He hasn't denied that."

Zebari was apparently referring to the use of chemical weapons by Saddam's forces against Iraqi Kurdish villages in the late 1980s.

He reiterated the position of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council that Saddam, accused of sending thousands of Iraqis to mass graves, should be tried by an Iraqi court.

The former Iraqi president, who was given prisoner of war status, was captured in mid-December near his home town of Tikrit, having evaded U.S. forces since the American military launched its war in Iraq with a March 20 attack targeting him.

Zebari said Saddam's trial should be fair and transparent because it would be a test for Iraq's new rulers to prove their adherence to the supremacy of law.

TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

Asked to comment on Turkey's fears Iraqi Kurds might seek a breakaway state, Zebari said there were no plans to divide Iraq.

"We have proved over the last nine months that all the Iraqis from the North to the South are committed to the national unity...No group, no party has any plans to undermine Iraq's unity or territorial integrity," he said.

President Bush said on Wednesday he was also committed to a "territorially intact" Iraq.

Turkish officials have been concerned Iraqi Kurds might press for an independent state, which could boost independence claims by Turkey's own restive Kurdish minority.

The Kurds, who fought with the United States to topple Saddam, are one of Iraq's best organized ethnic groups after enjoying U.S-protected autonomy since the 1991 Gulf War. They have presented a plan to the Iraqi Governing Council that grants significant autonomy to the Kurdish region.