Outgoing chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has described certain members of the US administration as ‘‘bastards’’ who set out to undermine him during his three years at the helm.In an uncharacteristic outburst to British newspaper The Guardian published today, Blix said: ‘‘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.’’In his interview to the daily, Blix also accused Washington of regarding the United Nations as an ‘‘alien power’’ which it hoped would sink without trace.And, asked if Iraq still harboured weapons of mass destruction, he said he ‘‘remains agnostic’’. ‘‘It’s true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were in the wrong. It could have been bad brinkmanship,’’ Blix said.Asked if he believed he had been the target of a deliberate smear campaign, Blix told the daily: ‘‘Yes, I probably was at a lower level.’’ ‘‘It was like a mosquito bite in the evening that is there in the morning as an irritant,’’ he added. Blix said ‘‘Iraqi enemies’’ spread rumours about him being homosexual and ‘‘going to Washington to pick up my instructions every two weeks.’’With regards to the way he was treated over weapons inspections in Iraq, Blix said: ‘‘By and large my relations with the US were good’’ but claimed that as the war against Iraq loomed, Washington ‘‘leaned on’’ his inspectors to produce more damning language in their reports.He added that US President George W Bush’s administration was particularly upset that the inspectors did not ‘‘make more’’ of their discovery in Iraq of cluster bombs and drones in the run-up to the US-led war.Blix, who retires in three weeks, told The Guardian that he is convinced that there are people in Bush’s administration ‘‘who say they don’t care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things.’’
