June 12, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 11, 1424

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LONDON, June 11: Outgoing chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has described certain members of the US administration as “b......s” who set out to undermine him during his three years at the helm.

Mr Blix also said US intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was not “solid” and should not have been used to justify the invasion.

In an uncharacteristic outburst to a British newspaper published on Wednesday, Mr Blix said: “I have my detractors in Washington. There are b......s who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much.”

In his interview to The Guardian, Mr Blix also accused Washington of regarding the United Nations as an “alien power” that it hoped would sink without trace.

Asked if he believed he had been the target of a deliberate smear campaign, Mr Blix told the daily: “Yes, I probably was at a lower level.”

With regards to the way he was treated over weapons inspections in Iraq, he said: “By and large my relations with the US were good”, but claimed that as the invasion of Iraq loomed, Washington leaned on his inspectors to produce more damning language in their reports.

He added that US President George Bush’s administration was particularly upset that the inspectors did not “make more” of their discovery in Iraq of cluster bombs and drones in the run-up to the invasion.

Mr Blix, who retires in three weeks, told The Guardian that he was convinced there were people in Mr Bush’s administration “who say they don’t care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things”.

Rather than seeing the UN as a collective body of decision-making states, Mr Blix said, Washington viewed it as an “alien power, even if it does hold considerable influence within it”.

The UN official said he “remained agnostic” when asked if he believed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would ever be found in Iraq.

He said the prospect of them being uncovered was passing by “quite fast and instead of talking about (finding) WMDs they’re talking about the programmes. We know for sure that they did exist ... and we cannot exclude they (the coalition) may find something”.

WMDs: In a separate interview with ABC News, the weapons inspector said most of the US intelligence on Iraqi WMDs was not “solid” and should not have been used to justify the invasion.

He said he was not inclined to accuse President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of a lack of sincerity.—AFP