Blix felt US intimidating him before Iraq war

In an interview on BBC television's Hardtalk, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said he believed Iraq had not tried to revive its clandestine nuclear weapons program as the United States and Britain insist.

Blix and ElBaradei led the hunt for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction for nearly four months late last year and early this year. The IAEA hunted for nuclear weapons, while Blix's UNMOVIC monitoring agency looked for chemical, biological and ballistic arms.

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Asked if the administration of President Bush had tried to intimidate him to produce reports support their case for a war on Iraq, ElBaradei said it had not.

"I think there were probably more efforts to intimidate Hans Blix, because there were more serious concerns about chemical and biological (weapons)," he said.

"Hans complained a lot about the media campaign, some of the administration's efforts to put pressure on him."

The Bush administration sharply criticized Blix before the war for refusing to back US and British assertions about Iraq's weapons programs in his reports to the UN Security Council.

UN weapons inspectors never found the massive stockpiles of banned weapons that Britain and the US claimed President Saddam Hussein possessed. Neither have the US and British forces who took over the hunt for his arsenal after the war.

ElBaradei said a lesson should be learned about the dangers of cutting short weapons inspections.