Blix hopes U.N. inspectors in Iraq after U.S. elections

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) -- The head of the U.N.'s new arms inspectorate for Iraq believes his inspectors will be allowed into Iraq after November's U.S. presidential election, Sweden's TT news agency said Monday.

"You can guess that nothing serious will happen until after the American election. That's a good guess," Hans Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister who previously headed the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying.

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The United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998, saying President Saddam Hussein was obstructing the work of the previous agency UNSCOM. No inspections have taken place since and Iraq has twice prevented the new body of UNMOVIC inspectors from entering the country.

Blix said that Iraq had been about one year from developing its own nuclear weapons at the time of its war with Kuwait.

The United States says that as long as Iraq refuses to let in the UNMOVIC inspectors, U.N. sanctions on Iraq, imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, will remain in force.

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