The United States wants the 15-nation council to authorize a military strike against Baghdad if it does not comply with stiff disarmament demands. But Washington has delayed introducing its draft resolution, which gives inspectors new rights, because of divisions among key council members.

In an interview on PBS television's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer," Blix said he originally wanted to begin work in mid-October. But he said he now hoped to send teams "before the end of October" to prepare for inspections, broken off in December 1998.

"If the Security Council is going to work out a new resolution, which might in some ways change our mandate, then we think that it will be reasonable to wait for that mandate, at least for some little time," he said.

Blix last week made clear to council members and Secretary of State Colin Powell he would delay going to Iraq until the resolution was adopted. "We look forward to speedy resolution and for us to come in shortly afterwards," he said on Friday.

He said staff in charge of logistics, such as opening offices, procuring vehicles and aircraft, would go in first.

A week later he said the first staff would go into the field "but it's still more of a trial inspection." However, his goal of getting about 80 inspectors on the ground at any given time would take a number of weeks, he said in the PBS interview.

Aware that his word could mean war or peace, Blix said any restriction of inspections by Iraqi authorities would be reported to the Security Council.

"We will have to determine and to assess and exercise our judgment as to whether we think they are fully cooperating or not. This is a great responsibility and it's one given to us and we will have to exercise it," he said.

Blix, a Swede, is the executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), in charge of accounting for Iraq's biological, chemical or ballistic weapon programs. Nuclear arms are under the jurisdiction of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Blix acknowledged that finding hidden weapons of mass destruction would be difficult and had been in the past.

"One must realize and remember that the Iraqis have had plenty of time to hide whatever they wanted to hide since 1998," he said. "They were quite capable of that before, and they would be even better at it now."

But he said, "I don't think the Security Council today would be willing to go along with the kind of cat and mouse play that they have in the past."

However, he said verifying that Iraq was clean of all banned weapons and related items was difficult. For example, even in the United States, authorities had a hard time finding deadly anthrax spores sent through the mail last year.

"This is not so easy to answer and to my knowledge they have not yet answered it here. Anthrax is also a problem in Iraq," he said.

However, he said Iraqi officials he met in Vienna earlier this month were aware they had to cooperate.

"I think the Iraqis realize that they will have to increase their facility for inspection, the credibility of inspections. Whether that amounts to full cooperation ... well, we will see. The proof of that pudding is in the eating," he said.

(China Daily October 10, 2002)