UNITED NATIONS, June 5: Despite being rebuffed by the United States, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix on Thursday called on the Security Council to have an “effective presence of international inspectors” back in Iraq.

Mr Blix said UN inspectors did not have the time to follow up on some late information provided by Saddam’s government.

Giving his final report to the Security Council on the eve of his retirement as the head of the UN inspection team, Mr Blix said that although Iraq had left unanswered many questions about its unconventional weapons one should not assume such dangerous arms still existed.

He noted that he had not found Iraq resumed its weapons of mass destruction production, although this did not mean such programmes did not exist. But he said it was “not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for”.

The failure of US teams to find any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons has become a major issue in Washington, London and other international capitals since Saddam’s possession of banned weapons was the main US and British justification for invading Iraq.

In his report to the council on Monday, Mr Blix said his teams found no evidence Iraq had chemical or biological weapons during more than three months of inspections, but they still had many questions and leads to follow-up when their searches were suspended. The UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission, known as UNMOVIC, has been sidelined by the United States as it attempts to explain why it has not found dangerous weapons in Iraq after some 11 weeks of searches since the war.

Iraq provided a list of 31 names of people associated with its weapons programmes, and Hans Blix said interviews “might have provided significant information” — including from Iraqis who helped destroy anthrax after the 1991 Gulf War.

The Security Council, in a resolution adopted May 22 that lifted economic sanctions against Iraq and authorized the US-led administration of the country, left the issue of future UN weapons inspections unclear.

Under the 1990 resolution imposing sanctions, UN inspectors had to certify that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction before sanctions could be lifted. The resolution ended sanctions without that certification.