Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb of UCSD said the report is a break from previous panels.

The committee says a search for medical treatments tailored to the new findings are "urgently needed" and should become a top priority for research funding. The report says understanding illnesses from the war will be critical in planning future military deployments and measures to protect homeland security, and calls for a reassessment of the use of pyridostigmine bromide.

Though some conclusions are hedged in careful language in the 135-page draft report, committee members said in interviews they were consciously breaking with the past scientific consensus and taking a strong stand on a politically and scientifically volatile subject.

"I would absolutely say it's a break from previous panels," said Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, a member of the panel and its scientific director for much of its existence. "It reflects a different body of evidence, because more studies have come out. No one had gone to the scientific evidence on acetylcholinesterase inhibitors."

The VA report draws conclusions that are essentially the opposite of those of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illness, which reported in 1996 that "current scientific evidence does not support a casual link" between the veterans' symptoms and chemical exposures during the Persian Gulf War.

Instead, the earlier group said, stress "is likely to be an important contributing factor to the broad range of physical and psychological illnesses currently being reported by Gulf War Veterans."

A panel of scientists convened in 1998 by the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academies that focuses on health and medical advice, has produced a series or reports that generally point away from neurotoxin exposure as a likely cause of the veterans' illnesses.

The United States sent 697,000 troops to the Persian Gulf at the end of 1990 to drive the Iraqi forces of President Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in early 1991. Though the military campaign was swift and successful, many veterans 13 years after the war ended still complain of persistent fatigue, headaches, joint pain, numbness, diarrhea and other health problems.

The new report cites data from a study of Kansas veterans showing that more than 30 percent of veterans of the war report three or more of such symptoms. The presence of multiple symptoms, their persistence for many years and the dominance of muscular and skeletal complaints all distinguish veterans of the war in the Persian Gulf from the ailments of veterans of other wars, Golomb said.