WASHINGTON Ñ The Bush administration is being quietly urged to develop low-yield nuclear bombs to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

Industry sources said the administration is being lobbied by both the Pentagon and members of Congress to develop a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons. The bombs would seek to destroy hardened targets in rogue states, particularly Iraq.

The sources said the Bush administration has agreed to explore the issue. They said the aim is destroy a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without destroying the surrounding population.

The U.S. military, the sources said, have been largely unsuccessful in destroying the bunkers used by Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. The U.S. Air Force has used the conventional GBU-28 bombs for such missions.

Dr. Robert Nelson of the Federation of American Scientists disclosed the program during a conference on Nov. 8 in Washington. Nelson is regarded as close to the Pentagon and knowledgeable of classified military projects.

Nelson told the conference that the weapons being proposed would have a yield of between one and 10 percent of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. He said the project is being "promoted by members of the U.S. nuclear weapons labs establishment and several congressmen."

"The mission that these weapons are supposed to accomplish is to improve the capability to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets," Nelson said. "That is, command bunkers that Saddam Hussein might occupy, storage sites containing chemical or biological weapons."

Nelson said the proposal for such a low-yield nuclear weapon was raised after the 1991 Gulf war. The GBU-28 was regarded as insufficient to destroy the bunkers deployed by Saddam for his personal security as well as weapons of mass destruction program.

The proposal was not pursued during the Clinton administration. But it sparked debate in the Pentagon and defense community.

The Pentagon and Energy Department have been asked by several key Republican senators to study the feasibility of low-yield nuclear weapons on deeply-buried targets. For his part, Nelson said that such a weapon used on Saddam's command center bunker would kill up to 80,000 people from radioactive fallout.

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