Blix: It’s clearly a disappointment, we had begun about 3½ months ago and I think we had made a very rapid start, we did not have any obstacles from the Iraqi side in going anywhere.  They gave us access and prompt access and we were in a great many places over Iraq and we had managed also to get going the destruction of the Al Samoud missiles.   We destroyed over 70 of them with Iraqi cooperation. So, of course, I think that after 3½ months to say that now we call it a day and close the door is rather short and I somewhat doubt when they adopted the resolution last autumn that they really had intended to give only 3½ months for inspections. The impatience took over and they concluded that this really would not get to the bottom of the barrel and therefore armed action was necessary.

JN: Why do you think, having had as many conversations with the Whitehouse as you have, that the American administration in particular, decided that more time wouldn’t solve the problem.

Blix: Well, I think they were doubtful from the beginning, the resolution that was adopted last autumn was one that was extremely demanding and perhaps they weren’t sure or doubted that the Iraqis would go along with it and that you would have a stalemate, a clash already from the beginning but I think they did cooperate with us and they [the Americans] lost patience, I think some time towards the end of January or the beginning of February.

JN: Is that because they believed that their intelligence was producing evidence of material that you weren’t able to confirm and that that produced what we might call a political frustration?

Blix: No, I think that -- I have a high regard for intelligence and I think it necessary but I must say that when you watch what came out of intelligence you were not so convinced,  We had a question of the aluminium tubes which were alleged to be for building of centrifuges and was much doubted even by lots of American experts and you have the even more flagrant case of the contract which was alleged that Iraq had concluded with Niger, or tried to conclude about the importation of raw uranium as a yellow cake and the IAEA found this was a fake. Now these things did not do much to strengthen the evidence coming, well not the evidence, but at least the stories coming from intelligence and the fact that we did not find things at the sites which were, or in very few cases found anything at sites which were given by intelligence also I think weakened that position.

JN: Do you think, let me put this bluntly, do you think that Saddam Hussein is in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction or not?

Blix: Well, I must say that I am very curious to see what the American’s may now find because now they are able to talk to people and when these people are no longer fearing repression by a regime if they tell the truth, so in all likelihood they will tell the truth and that we have never maintained as certain that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction but whether anthrax or VX what we have said is that their reporting on it demonstrated a great lacuna in the accounting but having something unaccounted for is not the same thing as saying that it does exist.

JN: Let me ask you a question about the future, do you think that the way that this episode ended at the UN is going to make it more difficult for operations of this sort through the Security Council involving weapons inspectors to be conducted in the future, because some people will have lost confidence because of the diplomatic impasse that we reached last week?

Blix: Well of course, I can put the question, if this type of inspection with all the powers that it had and several hundred men outside did not succeed when will it succeed, that is much too general a question, I don’t think any of the diplomats here really doubt that inspection will be very useful in the future, we have the case from South Africa when they did away with their nuclear weapons and inspections were quite useful to give confidence in that and I think that they will look at in an ad hoc manner.

JN: So, although your mission was brought to what you consider to be a premature end, there may be something for the future left from it?

Blix: I think we have learnt a lot and I think that in distinction from UNSCOM, the preceding organ we also managed to show that you can have this as a genuinely international operation. We were not the prolonged arms of any intelligence agency anywhere, we had cooperated with and we had good relations with them but we were genuinely serving the Security Council and I think that is necessary if the UN is going to do it.

JN: What is your reflection now as you look back?

Blix: Well, you see, if they have, say, anthrax or if they have VX then it should be easy for them to put it on the table and it’s just, of course, it is embarrassing, it’s a loss of face, but it would be easy. But if they don’t have it, then it is very difficult for them to give the evidence, they can take various people for interviews and so forth, but they have no credibility.   We can never believe what the regime says, inspectors, it’s not for inspections, it is not to believe in anybody, we have to have evidence, whether it comes from Iraqis, or it comes from intelligence and when the Americans go in now, they will be able to go to ask people who will no longer be fearing what they say and if the Iraqis have something, they will probably be lead to it

JN: and in the end we will know the truth?

Blix: Yes, I think so, I am very curious to see, if they find something. In ways paradoxical because if they don’t find something then they have sent 250,000 men to wage a war in order to find nothing, it is also paradoxical for Saddam Hussein, if he has nothing it is curious that he has been making difficulties for the inspectoions in the past, not so much this year.