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UN inspectors may be back in Iraq: Blix
The UN arms inspectors could be back on their job in Iraq within two weeks, Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has said.
The United Nations weapons inspectors could be back on their job in Iraq within two weeks of being asked by the world body to restart their work of certifying if US and Britain come across any weapons of mass destruction, Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has said.
"I think the world would like to have a credible report on the absence or the eradication of the programme of weapons of mass destruction," he told the BBC in an interview at UN headquarters on Thursday.
"We would be able not only to receive the reports of the Americans and the British of what they have found or not found, but we would be able to corroborate a good deal of this," he said.
He said the US and Britain have found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so far but added that it was still too early to say whether Iraq is free of them.
However, he was also quoted as saying that he was "perhaps a little more inclined" to believe Baghdad more now on his statement that it had no weapons of mass destruction than before the war began.
But that view could easily change if some discovery was made, he added.
He said his own inspectors had found some evidence that could be the tip of a hidden iceberg of banned weapons, but added that the same evidence could just be the remnants of an abandoned programme.
However, the White House said on Thursday that it was not yet time to discuss the possible return of UN weapons inspectors, who were withdrawn from Iraq one month ago on the eve of the US-led invasion.
