November 24, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 28, 1424

STOCKHOLM: “There’s a hatred against the United States and you have 130,000 American troops sitting there as a big target,” said Hans Blix as he leaned forward to make his point about the future of Iraq and its military occupation.

“The borders, although guarded, are not watertight. Weapons of mass destruction may not be there but conventional weapons are and the US does not have the capacity to guard it all,” Blix added. “The outlook is bad.”

His time over as chief UN weapons inspector, he has a bone to pick with those who took the United States and Britain to war with Iraq on claims that Baghdad could wage quick and terrible destruction.

“This was the basis upon which the war was sold and justified and today I think no one would say Iraq constituted a danger in the Spring of 2003,” said the 75-year-old Swede.

Sitting in the Stockholm flat where he has lived for more than 30 years between assignments, Blix now watches Iraq and the Middle East from the sidelines. But he gives notice that far from disappearing into history as a footnote, his voice will continue to be heard.

First there is a book he is writing, to be called “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, which he says will exhume issues and facts that some might prefer to remain buried.

Then there is a new commission against weapons of mass destruction — paid for by Sweden and supported by international think-tanks — he is putting together and heading.

He says both projects will bear fruit quickly, but his 70,000 word book should appear first and set the record straight about Iraq, at least from his perspective.

BOOK DEAL: A deal has been signed with publisher Bloomsbury and the manuscript should be finished by the end of the year.

“I was one of those who saw so much of what was happening and I have an obligation to write about that,” Blix said. “I have a lot of clarifications. There will be lots of interesting things, yes.”

The Hans Blix you meet at the door of his nondescript 1960s downtown apartment is not the Hans Blix who confidently walked the world stage last year. Every day he was caught in a vortex of lights and television cameras, as the world watched and weighed for nuance his every word on whether his inspectors had found in Iraq horrible weapons — as it lurched towards war.

Then, he was the master diplomat who parried the increasingly strident and irreconcilable expectations of the Americans and Iraqis in a calm and judicial manner.

Now, he comes to the front door in cardigan and carpet slippers, comfortable in a home that is large but not lavish. His beloved carpets, from the Middle East to Russia, collected for years as he travelled the world, line the floors and walls.

The bookshelves contain well-thumbed copies of Hali magazine, the bible for carpet collectors. The picture is of cosy domesticity.

Despite appearances, the former Swedish foreign minister who for 16 years headed the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, remains full of questions and nagging doubts.

He says the politicians, in their haste to go to war, did not lie outright to their people, but they distorted facts, ignored evidence and stretched the truth.

He believes the political fortunes of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are now tethered to what happens in Iraq.—Reuters