UN weapons inspector Blix to meet Security Council for first time since Iraq war

Top United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix is scheduled to address the Security Council tomorrow for the first time since the eve of hostilities in Iraq as Council members joust over what the UN's post-war role should be.

In his last address to the Council on 19 March, Mr. Blix, Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), made clear he would have liked his inspections to continue and he regretted that it appeared war was "imminent."

Since then he has stressed that UNMOVIC never asserted that Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction, one of the main reasons cited by the United States for its war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The US has not yet announced having found any such weapons since the conflict began.

In an interview with UN Radio at the height of the war, Mr. Blix said the best chance of finding them, if they existed, would emerge from interviews with scientists, the military and managers freed from fear of retribution. Some Iraqi scientists are now in the custody of US forces.

Mr. Blix will address one of two informal sessions the Council is scheduled to hold tomorrow. The second, on the UN Oil-for-Food programme, will hear from Benon Sevan, Executive Director of the UN Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP). Under the humanitarian programme, Baghdad was allowed to use a portion of its oil revenues to buy food and other relief supplies, while the rest was used for reparation claims against Iraq.

US President George W. Bush said last week he would ask the Council to lift the sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent 1991 Persian Gulf War. With sanctions in force, the UN administered Oil-for-Food programme is the only legal way of selling Iraq's oil.