MADRID, April 9: The invasion of Iraq was planned a long time in advance, and the United States and Britain were not primarily concerned with finding any banned weapons of mass destruction, the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said in an interview on Wednesday.

“There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the (weapons) inspections,” Mr Blix told a Spanish daily, El Pais.

“I now believe that finding weapons of mass destruction has been relegated, I would say, to fourth place, which is why the United States and Britain are now waging war on Iraq. Today the main aim is to change the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein,” he said, according to the Spanish text of the interview.

Mr Blix said US President George Bush had told him in October that he backed the UN’s work to verify US and British charges that Baghdad was developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

But he said he knew at the time “there were people within the Bush administration who were sceptical and who were working on engineering regime change”. By the start of March the hawks in both Washington and London were getting impatient, he added. —AFP