LONDON, 12 June 2003 — Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix accused US officials of mounting a smear campaign against him in a new interview published yesterday.
The normally cool Swede, who is due to retire from his UN post at the end of the month, also said US officials pressured him to use more damning language when reporting on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs.
“By and large my relations with the US were good,” Blix was quoted as saying in London’s Guardian newspaper. “But toward the end the (Bush) administration leaned on us.”
American and British troops in Iraq have failed to find weapons of mass destruction, after visiting more than 230 suspected sites. The lack of hard evidence has put huge pressure on Washington and London since Saddam’s alleged possession of banned weapons was a main US and British justification for invading Iraq.
Blix, who oversaw a fruitless search for Iraqi weapons for 3 1/2 months, said that “at a lower level,” he was probably the target of a smear campaign by US officials wishing to discredit him.
“I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media,” he was quoted as telling The Guardian. “Not that I cared very much. It was like a mosquito bite in the evening that is there in the morning, an irritant.”
Blix, who turns 75 later this month, did not specify what “nasty things” were said about him. But previously he alleged that US officials tried to undermine his inspection team by telling the media he withheld information about an Iraqi drone from the Security Council. He said the US claim was unfair.
He said he believed some officials in the Bush administration were suspicious of the United Nations in general.
“There are people in this administration who say they don’t care if the UN sinks under the East River (in New York), and other crude things,” he was quoted as saying.
Blix told The Guardian that Iraqi officials spread rumors claiming he “went to Washington every two weeks to pick up (his) instructions.”
Although UN inspectors found no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in Iraq, Blix said he remained “agnostic” about whether Saddam Hussein possessed such arms shortly before the Iraq war.
