The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

There are people in this administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things.

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war...I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.

Disarmament by war and democracy by occupation are difficult prospects.

The world has gotten so interwoven.

The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes.

We have not found any smoking guns.

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it.

By and large my relations with the US were good.

But in the Middle Ages people were convinced there were witches. They looked for them and they certainly found them.

International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.

Even on television, the wavelengths that you use, they have to be distributed between countries.

There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality, and eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality.

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can.

I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much.