Paris - UN Security Council members may be prepared to accept a less than 100 per cent verification that Iraq has destroyed its weapons of mass destruction, the Chief UN weapons inspector, Mr Richard Butler, has said.
"It is true that in some cases, an exact, 100 per cent accounting could be impossible. We told the council that for the first time this week and nobody reacted," Mr Butler told the French daily, Liberation, in an interview published yesterday.
The UN says sanctions against Iraq over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until Baghdad has destroyed its weapons.
"Of course the 100 per cent target does not disappear . . . But we could imagine a situation that conformed with the spirit of the resolution if not its letter. A situation in which we believe we have found the most significant part of what was Iraq's mass destruction capacity," he said.
Mr Butler last Thursday ended two days of briefings in New York aimed at showing Iraq had failed to comply with Security Council requirements.