Berlin, May 23: The chief UN Weapons Inspector said he was starting to suspect Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that his teams remain ready to help in the country if required, a newspaper reported today. ``I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were Weapons of Mass Destruction- and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were none,'' Hans Blix said in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. If that were the case, he said, Iraq's evasive behaviour in recent years could be due to Saddam Hussein's fixation with Iraqi honour and wish to dictate the conditions under which people could enter the country. ``For that reason, he said 'no' in many situations and gave the impression he was hiding something,'' added Blix, whose inspectors left Iraq just before the beginning of the US-led military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein's regime, told the Tagesspiegel daily. ``The fact that al-Saadi surrendered and said there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction has led to me to ask myself whether there actually were any,'' Blix said. ``I don't see why he would still be afraid of the regime, and other leading figures have said the same.''

A key US argument for attacking Iraq was the claim that Baghdad was hiding its Weapons of Mass Destruction, or programmes to make them, from UN inspectors.

Bureau Report